Spring Classroom Silliness

 Art by mamasachacreative

There really never is a dull moment in my classroom. I do generally strive to be the biggest distraction in the room - singing, dancing, standing on furniture, waving my arms wildly, sinking to the floor in mock despair...

I already shared a post regarding the phrase my husband has adopted and my own kids roll their eyes when they hear, "I didn't eat it." But I also have taken tried and true memory phrases and put my own personal spin on them. You probably know the standard Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally to remember the order of operations (parenthesis, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction). I didn't alter this one too much - but enough to keep it memorable. I always say, "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Shirley." When kids correct me, I say, "I don't have an Aunt Sally. I have an Aunt Shirley."

Today my students reminded me of another mathematical memory phrase that I made my own. Most kids come to me knowing they can remember the long division steps with the phrase "Dirty Monkeys Smell Bad." But I like to say, "Dead Monkeys Smell Crazy Bad." I put a lot of dramatic emphasis on "crazy" which stands for check or compare. I want students to get in the habit of checking to make sure the answer to their subtraction problem is smaller than the divisor before they bring down the next number. Apparently it worked with this current group of kids. When I told them we were reviewing long division today I heard several kids say to themselves or each other "Dead Monkeys Smell CRAZY Bad!"  Then they kept shouting at each other to "check!" or "compare!" if students tried to tell me the next step was to bring down the next number before saying out loud that the difference was smaller than the divisor.

I suppose all of this explains why my students seem shocked when I mention my kid in college or that I've been teaching for over 20 years. Twenty years is more than double the number of years lived by my fourth graders, but I tell them all the time I'm a crazy old lady. So when they express surprise at my age, ("You're older than my mom!") I always respond with, "I keep telling you, I'm an old lady!" Yesterday I had a student respond with, "But you don't look or act old!"

That same student was involved in a playground altercation that resulted in mutual punching today. As disappointing as the incident was, the student in question did show significant growth in his reflection after the fact. He was able to articulate how he had shown self-restraint and then readily admitted where he let his "temper do the talking."

This week marks the middle of our third trimester. Parents will be asked to check their child(ren)'s progress using the online gradebook. Last Friday I had a student email me asking about missing and incomplete assignments. I cc'd her mom on my response telling her she could complete the incomplete assignments if she could locate them, or I would be happy to email her what she needed to do them again. She hit "reply all" and included her mother on her response that made me literally laugh out loud.

This student took initiative... up to a certain point. I do a lot of teaching about growth mindset. Even though these kids (who only recently could finally claim a decade of life on this earth) still have room to grow, they are clearly growing and becoming better versions of themselves.