Elementary School

I'm a middle school teacher but this year I am working with elementary age students.  Can I just say they are FUNNY!  I love middle school but these kinders, 1st graders and 2nd graders are really fun.  They make me laugh.  This past week we were testing them and that's when their funny comes out.


Examples:


We will call him B.  B is a kinder.  I was asking him to look at letters and identify them.  He started out ok and then just kind of forgot what he was doing.  He would turn around in his chair and look at the wall and not at the page in front of him.  I would try and get him on track but it wasn't easy.  I could help him identify the letter if he didn't know it so I did ONCE and only ONCE.  When I did, B looked at me and said "I don't believe you."  He then preceded to turn around in his chair and started playing with the mat I had around my station.  He was through identifying letters.  This kid was constantly moving.  I would be surprised if he could sit still for more than 5 minutes.


Our next test was to tell me the sounds of letters.  I knew this would be fun.  He identified a few sounds and then started naming letters.  I redirected him to tell me the sounds.  It just so happened that M was the next sound he needed to tell me.  He started out in a normal voice and then got louder.  "Mmm" "Mmm" "Mmm!" B was yelling the last "Mmm."  I had a real hard time keeping a straight face and so did the other teachers who were in there and heard him.  It made my day.  Good thing he was my last kid to test for the day because I don't know if I could have done another. 


I had a 1st grader named L.  He was a talker.  I learned his entire life story in the 15 minutes it took me to test him.  He loves video games.  he is trying to kill this person in his game but he cant because the cops keep shooting him.  He doesn't like cops.  So when he was reading to me he saw the word favorites.  L didn't know it but looked at it, saw the v and yelled video game!  He was really proud of himself.  He kept smiling and was very happy to read.  Good thing he put me in a good mood because after him I had the above kinder named B. 


The last 1st grader I tested was A.  She has a serious concentration issue and she says she needs glasses because she can't see.  I learned that she missed school to hold a funeral for her dog who passed away the day before.  Kind of sad but kind of cool her family loves dogs.  Anyway, she had to identify numbers and letters.  There were 8 different tasks each one minute long and she couldn't do it.  She never finished a task without talking to me about something else.  I really was having a hard time keeping a straight face because she was talking about random stuff a 1st grader finds interesting..  When we got to the reading she read one line and then started singing to me.  I kind of lost it then.  She kept singing the only sentence she knew.  It just so happened to be the first sentence of the paragraph and we never went any further.  When she left to go back to class I couldn't help but just sit there and giggle for about 5 minutes. 


Kids.  They are funny.  It made my Friday end with a laugh and started my weekend off on a good note.


Hope y'all are having a good weekend!