Saturday, December 11, 2010

Something to Cheer About?

Mrs. Eagle and I attended the NSTA conference in Nashville last weekend and had a wonderful time, picked up some fantastic ideas (as usual) and bought some really cool stuff.

On an aside, this was held at the Opryland Hotel which in May had something like 15' of water in it from the flooding.  It just opened about two weeks prior to the conference so we were eager to see how it had been repaired.  Oh.  My.  You would NEVER know that the building had been damaged so badly.  There was absolutely no sign of it.  The place was amazing!

In any case, one of the really cool things I bought was a Dr. Seuss book, Oh Say Can You Seed?  Okay, it's actually not written or drawn by the late Dr. Seuss, but his family has authorized the use of his characters for educational publications done in the Seuss style.  This book is all about flowering plants and since we were just finishing up our unit on flowering plants, I just had to have it.  It's nice when you can find neat things that actually align with your standards.  And this book is really well done from the science standpoint.

So, back at school, we finished up our review for our on Tuesday and I had time to read this book to them.  I used the document reader so they could see all the pictures up on the screen, and took the last few minutes of class to give the kids a dose of Dr. Seuss.

It always amazes me how seventh graders will become deadly silent and completely absorbed when you read to them.  I've often wondered if I'd get the same results if I was reading cereal boxes.  They still love picture books.  And they love being read to.  So I read to them and you could have heard a pin drop.

Amazing.  I must do this more often.

However, the funniest, and most surprising response was from my sixth period class.    I read the book, finished the last page, and closed it.

And they applauded.

I am not kidding.

They applauded.

It was the weirdest thing.  And truth be told, it made us all laugh.  And they said how much they enjoyed it.

But seriously, as a teacher, when was the first (or last time) you ever got a round of applause for what we do each and every day?

Amazing.

5 comments:

Kathie said...

I am reading A Christmas Carol to my 8th grade Language Arts classes and they are loving it! I haven't had any applause as yet but I have certainly received a lot of compliments from the students. I do this every year and the kids just eat it up. I bring in a basket-load of Christmas picture books to my 7th grade classes just before Christmas and they spend the last three days before break reading stories to each other. It is a ton of fun!

ChiTown Girl said...

I love when you can have moments like this with the 'big kids.' In kdg, and now in 1st, they break out into applause constantly! They think EVERYTHING I do is worthy of applause. Too cute!

Anonymous said...

I read to 6, 7, 8, and 9, perhaps even 19th graders. They were always enthralled.

http://dkzody.wordpress.com said...

High school kids like to be read to, also. They would always coerce their English teachers to read the assigned literature books aloud. Took forever, but the kids loved it.

Teacher Teacher! said...

I’m a middle school computer teacher, last week I showed a video of a band that played only on iTouches and iPads. As “Feliz Navidad” came on, my 3rd hour started singing along. Random christmas caroling...love it! It was hilarious.