Seeing Something NEW.....

I have been in a classroom as a teacher one way or another for about 25 years now. Today, I saw something new. Something I'd never seen in an elementary, junior high or senior high school classroom.

My students were taking a test over the Roman Republic. There was a geography section to the test, I was asking them to label major geographic features of the Roman World on an outline map. As I was cruising about my classroom monitoring the testing, I saw something new.

One of my students was writing on her hand. Students writing on their hands, arms, legs, shoes, school texts, binders, desks etc. is nothing new in a junior high. But THIS was not a phone number, the name of some boy she liked, some music group logo, random geometric shapes or some other junior high type of body art. I stopped and quietly asked her why she was writing THAT on her hand. She'd written, on her left hand, "Adriadic" and "Adriatic". She was trying to 'spell out' the correct spelling of the Adriatic Sea. I suppressed a snicker, smiled down at her and pointed to some of the blank space on the bottom of her map and told her she could spell out words THERE before she labeled her map. Something new, something different, after 25 years.

Have you seen anything new, different or really interesting from your students recently ? Let us know, share them !

Thanks for reading my blog! Your comments are welcome !