Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Portent of Another Long Year?

It's the first day of school and already, the third graders have homework - just a get-to-know you sheet, but still. Ross sat down to do it right away, though, a good start! Among several correct responses, he included the information that his hair is 'bland', his favorite class is 'gum', and he likes to eat 'sqash'. When I marked the items he needed to double-check, he stormed away grumbling loudly that B-L-A-N-D IS in the DICTIONARY! A grumble-filled minute later, he came back with his corrections: 'bloand', 'guy', and 'squash'. I praised his correct spelling of squash and started to say that he could bring the dictionary in and I'd help him find the other two words, but he flew off the handle so, eight minutes after sitting down to do his first-ever THIRD GRADE homework, Ross landed in time-out.

Rather than setting a time, I told him to sit there until he was ready to give the right sort of attention to his assignment. I figured he might sit there all afternoon but it only took about ten minutes before he called, in a calm voice, that he was ready...and it turned out that he was. He came in and collected the paper, took it quietly into the other room, made his corrections and brought it back for my review: sure enough, his hair is blond...and his favorite class? P.E.

5 comments:

Chaotic Joy said...

Hee hee. Hey, it's really called "Gym" anyway.

karen said...

"Gym" (gum...guy) was apparently beyond his first-day-of-school spelling capacity. Good thing there are 179 more days for him to work on it!

p.s. Chris says I should have made Ross elongate "P.E." - thinks he'd still be at the table, complaining that "physical" is NOT in the dictionary, even if we clue him in about the tricky "PH" start...

Chaotic Joy said...

Oops, that was supposed to read "it's NOT really called gym anyway"

OH well. Ross and I were on the same page today. Couldn't get it right.

Lady Epiphany said...

Homework correcting with the dictionary: 1 WMP

Offering to help look words up: -1 WMP

Homework meltdown incurring a timeout: 1 WMP

Telling Ross to sit there until he was ready to give the right sort of attention to his assignment: 1 WMP

Not sending him back to the dictionary to un-abbreviate PE: -1 WMP

Total points this incident: 1 WMP

Anonymous said...

Can Grandmoo's give WME points? You win! (From the gal who insisted for three days that it HAD to be Sinderella, because C is for CANDY!) Great job Ross... I'd have let him through first time out. (Of course, I'd probably not have let YOU through with the same, but you cheat. "R E D" and "none" are much easier to spell!