I'm a bit of a weather junkie.
So, this morning I dutifully watched the local news and verified that today was going to be a bit warmer with a small possibility of scattered showers.
Note the small possibility part...
We noticed at lunch that it was raining and pretty dark out. Not raining hard, but it was definitely gloomy outside.
However.
During sixth period we had almost made it to the end of the class when the thunder began rumbling and we could hear the wind blowing pretty hard and the rain was crashing down on the roof. One of my kids came from an errand to the office and mentioned that it was pouring sheets out there.
And then the power went out.
Oh wonderful.
Luckily my emergency light was working and my laptop switched to battery. No internet, no phone, but at least we could play a game of candy vocabulary while we waited for the lights to come on.
And waited.
And waited.
We went through several rounds of candy vocabulary and the kids were getting restless. I dug through my desk and found my glow-in-the-dark fluorescent chalk and my flashlight that has a blacklight setting. No batteries. Dang it! I dug around, found some batteries, loaded it up and joy of joys, it worked! Next, I grabbed some of our free poster paper (from a local publishing company that donates scraps to us) and found some that was pretty dark in color.
"Hey, look at this," I told my kids (thankfully this is my smallest class so it's no big deal to have them circle around a table and watch me demonstrate something.)
I gave a kid the blacklight, and grabbed one of the chalk pieces and started drawing a cell. As soon as the orange chalk hit the paper it was illuminated by the blacklight.
"Ohhhhhhhh," said the kids in unison. "That's cool!"
I proceeded to draw a cell and had the kids tell me what organelles I was drawing. "That's a mitochondrion!", they'd yell. "Oh, look, a chloroplast!"
A great way to review, even in the dark, eh?
I think we were almost disappointed when the lights came on ten minutes before the end of the school day!
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8 comments:
You are seriously awesome. I so so so love it!!!
sometimes you gotta improvise!!! way to go!!
way to make the best of a bad situation!! Good job thinking on your feet!
Katie
www.sneakterteacher.blogspot.com
THAT is brilliant! Seriously, you've now inspired me to stock up with a flashlight, dark paper, and some glow-in-the-dark chalk/markers for my own emergency supply! This is why teachers are amazing.
Lucky kids, to have such a creative teacher ! Did the power ever come back on?
Fun!! Hey, what's candy vocabulary?
I haven't thought about what I'd do if the power went out. Most interesting!
"OOOOOOOOO," said all the little crocodiles - "Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile"
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