Geometry Guffaws

All of last week, my geometry kids have been working their way through a hands on project involving special special segments in a triangle. At the beginning of this week, I explained that everything they had been able to do with their hands, we could do on the computer.

"Are you kidding! We could have done all of this on a computer?!"

"Oh yeah, it is so cool."

Grumble, grumble, grumble from the students.

One part of the computer assignment encouraged the students to create a circle around their triangles, but the three vertices of the triangle had to touch the edges of the triangle. This is called circumscribing the triangle. One of my kids eagerly called me over, "Ms. Bateman, did I circumcise this right?"

"Um..."

His ears immediately blushed bright red. He looked to his left, glanced to his right, nobody had noticed except him and me. We had a great chuckle together.

Later, I was so insanely bored watching them work on the computers. They are so good and so dedicated that I just sit and watch and maybe every ten minutes clarify something for one student. I'm thankful of course, but yeesh, what a long class period. So ... I decided that we needed to practice a lock down.

"What would we do if they came over the intercom and said we needed to go into a lockdown?"

"Get under the desks!"

"So let's practice, I'll go get the lights." The kids scrambled to hide themselves in the small space below their computer.

"No, no, no, this won't work. It is quite obvious that you are in here, your papers are everywhere."

All of these little arms reached up and over and snuck their papers down with them.

"Hmm ... better, but some of you forgot your pens. Nah, this isn't working, your chairs are all over the place."

Ghostly chairs started to be tucked into their places, followed by obvious grunts of discomfort from the crammed students.

"Wow! This looks absolutely amazing, I wish you all could see it," but my attention was pulled towards Colin's computer. Colin was slowly reaching up, searching with his fingers, then finding his computer screen. He slowly turned his screen towards the front of the room, and as it was still squeaking, I read: WE ARE HERE!

"Oh Colin! Great, you've sabotaged us all," and he and his neighbor burst into hysterics. Then I started laughing, then we all started laughing.

The rest of class was peppered with bursts of "We are here! We are here!" in high-pitched voices. The kids confessed that it's from Horton Hears a Who.

I love the funny days.