I’m having a wonderful start to the year with my new class! Here are two recent vignettes from second grade:
Vignette #1:
“Mrs. Hogan,” H announced loudly, his expression aghast, “I found something unexpected! There was a broken crayon on the floor!”
His tone and volume caught the class’s attention, and the kids looked up. He held the two pieces of a fractured blue crayon in an accusatory manner.
N. stood up, struck a dramatic pose, and announced in a stentorian voice (well, at least as stentorian as a 7 year old girl’s voice can be), “Good night, Blue Prince!”
S, a nearby student, commented in an aside, “I think you mean “Good night, Sweet Prince!”
Without changing her pose or missing a beat, N. corrected herself, booming out, “Good night, Sweet Prince!”
I was hard put not to applaud.
Vignette #2:
L. put the dead snake body he’d found in his driveway under the document camera. After the initial oohs and aahs, we began having a lively discussion about whether or not it was a snake skin or a smooshed snake. I was pretty sure it was the latter, but L felt certain it was a shedded skin. We looked for evidence and several students reached out to touch the snake, turning it over and pointing to certain points of interest.
L. announced with great authority, “If you’ve touched the snake, you’re going to need to wash your hands. Oh, and you don’t need to if you didn’t touch it.”
Another student commented, “Oh, yeah. It probably had rabies.”
Several students took large steps backward and a few glanced at their hands and then rushed toward the sink.
As the day was coming to a close, I opted not to dive into a convoluted discussion of rabies as a mammalian disease and the more likely salmonella risks and instead just took advantage of the motivation to hand wash.
Note to self: consider clarifying this all at another date. Or not.
Thanks for the glimpse into 2nd grade! Keep enjoying and creating the space for your students’ voice. You have created the space where they feel comfortable sharing! Lucky kids!
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It’s such a gift to work with young children!
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I had to look up “stentorian”! Thanks for the new vocab 😉 I loved reading these vignettes. Kids are so funny!
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They pretty much crack me up on a daily basis!
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What a fun group! Thanks for the morning giggle!
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They are fun!
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I bet the sound bites are well worth the exhaustion some days! lol!
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Most days this year 🙂
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I adore the conversations between children as they embrace big ideas of their evolving world. I HAVE LONG SAID this would be a great book by some teacher lucky enough to have the strength to write them down at the end of every day!!!
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I’m sure you’re right. There’s always something noteworthy going on.
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Haha! Oh, my gosh, your little Hamlet quoters. My gosh, what a class! I so love second graders. Like Anita said, you might be the strong and lucky teacher who has had enough left to write enough of your sweet stories for a book. It would be a great one.
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Second graders are pretty awesome. I’m pretty sure I’ll just be blogging about them though, not tackling a manuscript 🙂 Although there’s certainly plenty of material…
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I think you left something important out- like what happened when you first found that smooshed snake in the docucam! Thanks for this delightful glimpse into your classroom, which obviously benefits from having a teacher with a sense of humor.
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Oh, I’d told him he could put the snake there so he could show it to everyone 🙂 We’re having fun with some spontaneous end of day sharing. We’ve had trophies, geodes, a sparkly rock and now a snake.
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I wish Leo could be in your class. He is so curious and wants to know everything. I love how you collect priceless stories from your classroom. You can’t make this stuff up.
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There is certainly a lot of material to choose from. My biggest problem is that I often forget it in the midst of everything else going on!
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That is such good news about your September in the classroom! Take good care of MBH on the weekends. We need teachers like you with kids.
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It’s been awesome! I’m also having plenty of fun on the weekends 🙂
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This is an absolutely great start to my Friday–just stopping by before jumping into the routine of getting ready. Thanks for the giggles. I’m charmed by your students.
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I’m so glad I could provide some giggles to start your day. I swear I forget half the stories before the day’s even over!
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