A Child's Laugh

This week I taught reading to the whole class and pretty much took control of the kids' full morning routine. My cooperating teacher and I get along great most of the time but this week she started to test me more and more.  Its one thing to do it, but another thing to do it in front of the kids.  If she makes me look like I don't know what I'm doing then by the time I take over the whole day the kids won't respect me.  I talked to my mom about it and she thinks it because Mrs. S. knows that I will be a great teacher.  So much so that she has to throw some curve balls in there just to make sure supposedly.

Anyway, I just wanted to share a small moment of my reading section with the kids on Thursday.  We read a story called "Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash" and were talking about the cause and effects of the story.  The manual didn't explain it very well so I had to make up my own version off the top of my head.  I started out by saying that the effect is the end result and the cause is what made the effect happen.  I gave my students an example "Jonathon tripped over the chair," and asked them to give me ideas of what could have caused that to happen.  They said, "He was walking backwards and fell," and "He tripped over Bobbie's shoelaces and then tripped over the chair".  That gave us all a good laugh because Bobbie is the one that always has his shoes untied.  Then, I let them come up with their own effects.  One boy said, "Jumping out of a plane without a parachute."  Haha, okay...what the heck was this kid thinking?  "Alright, what could a cause be" I asked the kids.  Hands shot up in the air faster than I've ever seen.  I pointed to one little girl.  She responded with, "Because a giant falcon would carry you in his claws, duh Miss Garwood!"  I couldn't even discipline her for saying the word duh because I was laughing so hard with a mental picture of this little girl flying through the air with a giant falcon.  The class erupted with laughter and so did my cooperating teacher.  I couldn't breathe because I was laughing so hard.  Finally, a laughable moment for everyone where I proved to them that learning can be fun!  My second graders better watch out- a huge tidal wave full of fantastic fun and learning is coming their way!

To top that off, I got to go watch one of my students play soccer at an indoor soccer stadium this weekend with my cooperating teacher.  Its a stadium that I played in all throughout middle school.  When we got there, we ran into the student's mom who said that her son hadn't slept last night because he was so excited for us to come to his game :)  Even though he is only eight, he plays on a high level traveling team. I was surprised by his ball control and his shots on goal.  He is on his way to being a star athlete.  It was nice to get a chance to meet his mom and to learn more about their background.  I loved getting to watch soccer again and yell with the rest of the parents.  It brought back my love of this sport and made me realize how much I miss coaching/refing/ playing.  Soccer is truly a beautiful game.