Laugh Lines May 2007

Gone but not Forgotten
My second-grade teaching team was introducing a lesson on past tense verbs and students were asked to give examples. One student responded, "Birthday!" The teacher asked, "How is birthday past tense?" The student replied, "Because my birthday has already past."
Cecily Brooks
Cordova, TN

Spelling It Out
In my kindergarten classroom after Christmas break, we were on the rug sharing things we did over the vacation, what we got for Christmas, etc. Brendan raised his hand and explained that during the next vacation he was going to get a PSP® (PlayStation® Portable). Jacob raised his hand and said that he got a PSP for Christmas. Kallie then raised her hand and said, "I got a D-O-G for Christmas."
Myndy Holbrook
Macdoel, CA

Straight Shooter
One day, I was discussing pollination with my fourth graders. When I asked them to describe the process, one boy raised his hand and said, "Well, one flower shoots its pollen to another flower." When I asked him where he got the idea of the flower "shooting" the pollen, he said, "It has a pistil that it uses to shoot it!"
Tara Peters
Louisburg, KS

Circle Time Sightings
At circle time, I was about to read a book to my students called Five Minutes' Peace about a family of elephants. As usual with the group, we did some predicting as we looked at the cover of the book. The cover showed a mommy elephant in a bath tub trying to relax. I asked my students, "What do we see on this cover?" One student responded, "An elephant in a bathtub!" Another student quickly piped in, "That's not something you see every day!"
Debra Dalrymple
Mount Kisco, NY

Funky Folklore
When reviewing the story of Johnny Appleseed with my students, I held the book up and showed pictures to see what they remembered. There were the usual answers, "He was a friend to the animals," and so on. When I showed the page with Johnny wearing the sideway pot on his head, a little boy exclaimed, "Oh I know, Johnny was a homeboy!"
Susan Murdoch
Littleton, CO

First-Year Encouragement
My first year teaching kindergarten, I tried many different approaches to teaching. One such approach was to make intentional mistakes in the daily morning message I wrote to the class. I knew that most students loved to correct the teacher and I was hoping that more students would be drawn to reading the message. One exceptional student would consistently catch my mistakes and point them out to me. After a few weeks of this, he came up to me and said, "Miss Pita, I can tell you are a new teacher because you make so many mistakes in the morning message. But don't worry, you'll get better with practice."
Elizabeth Pita
Tenafly, NJ

May, 2007, Vol.37, No.8