Classroom Anecdotes
Each day in the classroom is filled with beauty, and it is often difficult to decide what to write about. So, here is a little bit of everything from this week.
2nd Grade
In 2nd grade literature, we are reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We have just gotten to the point at which Dorothy accidentally kills the Wicked Witch of the West, and she is horrified by it. I played dumb a little bit with my students and asked them why she felt so awful, and one of them said, “She doesn’t want to kill anything; not even a wicked witch.”
“But why not if she is wicked?” I asked, “Isn’t it a good thing that she is dead? Now she and the lion can be free, along with all the Winkies the witch enslaved.”
A student piped up to say something so concise I couldn’t believe my ears: “Dorothy doesn’t want to be wicked.” I encouraged her to go on, and she said, “The Wicked Witch kills people. So, if Dorothy kills the Wicked Witch, she thinks that makes her wicked, too.”
I was so impressed, and I became even more impressed when another student joined in the discussion to add, “Yeah, that’s what she thinks, but Dorothy isn’t wicked. It was an accident—she couldn’t have known that water would kill the witch. ”
3rd Grade
In 3rd grade literature, we are reading Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery (author of Anne of Green Gables). We have been discussing an ongoing phenomenon in the book: magic. On several occasions, the main character—a wonderful little girl named Jane—encounters an object, a person, or a place that seems to call out to her, and almost belong to her, even though she has never encountered it before.
In the chapter we were discussing, Jane comes upon a house she’s never seen before, but that she knows belongs to her… even though it’s a bit of a fixer-upper. We talked about why she feels so drawn to it, and one of my students said, “Well, at Jane’s house in Toronto, nothing is broken, but everything is untouchable and Jane isn’t allowed to help, even though that’s really how she wants to show her love. This house is magic to her because it needs a LOT of help, and Jane has a LOT of love that has been trying to get out for a long time.”
My god. It is always THIS book that brings the most insightful comments out of my third grade students. It awakens something in them… And it’s magical.
4th Grade
In 4th grade, we are reading The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. There is an incredibly exciting (and scary) chapter where Laura and her little sister Carrie are trapped in the schoolhouse with their classmates during a sudden and severe blizzard. When the children go outside to attempt the walk home, they can barely see, and there is a very real chance of them all wandering out into open prairie, never to be found again. While discussing the chapter, the atmosphere was very tense in the room, and as I looked around at my students, I saw a handful of them literally shivering... In a comfortable, 75-degree classroom in southern California.
6th Grade
In 6th grade, we are reading The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. It has been challenging for them, but they love it. Today, we read a chapter together in which it is dramatically revealed that two of the characters present at a dinner party actually had an affair long ago, and that their son—who they think died the night he was born—is actually standing in the same room as them, twenty-five years old and incognito… but none of the three people know it! The shock on my students’ faces, and the earnest gasps that escaped their throats were just wonderful to behold. I love those reactions—they show me that the students are fully invested in the story.
They are also really excited about a project we are doing to complement the book, where we create handwritten cards with character descriptions on them, pin them to a bulletin board, and illustrate all of the relationships and complications in the story using color-coded yarn and symbols. I will make sure to post a picture here when we have finished it.
That’s all for today! I thought it might be fun to share some little stories like this occasionally, so let me know what you think about this slight temporary change in programming.