Third grade

During my math small group time, I had a student with a heavily bandaged hand who came to me from Miriam's class.  He complained the whole time about how much his hand hurt.  It was hard for him to hold his pencil.  He told me enough times that his hand hurt that I finally told him there was nothing I could do about it, so stop telling me.

Guess how he hurt his hand?

Another kid told him to punch his cast as hard as he could.  Turns out he could punch it hard enough that it drew blood and needed to be bandaged.

When I picked up my class from PE, one of the students wouldn't get up off the stage where they had been sitting at the end of PE.  I said, "Go line up."

She said, "I can't."

I asked her why not.

She said that part of her medical condition was that she couldn't move sometimes.  This mysterious medical condition is news to me and it's March and she's been in my classroom all year.  I said, "Well, come to class when you can move again."  I started to walk away.

She popped up and said, "I can move again."

I was reading to my class from May B. by Caroline Starr Rose.  In it, May lives on the prairie and the book described buffalo chips by the stove.

I asked them if they knew what buffalo chips were.

They had all sorts of ideas about Buffalo flavored potato chips, or a spice that you can use on your food.  Maybe you grated the chips over the food for flavoring?

 One boy raised his hand and said, "I know what buffalo chips are, but I don't want to say it."

I broke the news to them what buffalo chips were and they were horrified.  Completely horrified.  They wondered how you could collect them.  I explained that they dried.  One girl said, "Maybe they used their shirts."  She demonstrated grasping something while holding onto the fabric of her shirt.

One girl said, "I'm never eating chips again."

I said, "Buffalo chips have nothing to do with potato chips."

"But what if they accidentally ate a buffalo chip?"

I said, "They didn't.  They knew what they were."

"What if they thought they were...chocolate?"

One boy said, "Why didn't they just use coal?"

I said, "They didn't have coal."

He said, "They'd better get some."

They were shaken by the whole experience. 

Third grade is amazing.