Gnu decided to move away from fiction in our weekly reading block to non-fiction. We work with a group of scholars that range from the first to the fourth grade so I'm thinking this should be interesting. After all, who wants to read about some boring person, or a place they never heard of, or some special moment in time that means nothing to them. With the announcement of the non-fiction reading, Gnu asked me to remove everything from our Greek Mythology bulletin board in the hallway as we will be making a new one. I agreed and asked what should I do to start the new bulletin board. She said to "stamp out the letters for Non-Fiction and then place under it where does your gum come from." "Ok, what color should I make the letters?" "I'll leave that up to you," she said. "I'm going to use pink." "Pink?" "Yes, it's the color of bubble gum." "I like that so let's go with it."
On day one of non-fiction she handed out our first reading assignment, The History of Bubble Gum. The reaction was what I expected from the scholars, "we have to read all of this." Gnu's response was "I'll read, you listen and then you have to answer the questions at the end of the story." "Ohhhh, we have to answer all of those questions?" As she was reading out loud it didn't take long to see that the she had the scholars undivided attention and when it came time to answer the questions most of them couldn't get their hand up fast enough to answer a question. On day two of non-fiction she read a picture story called Chavela and the Magic Bubble. It's a story about a little girl that finds a piece of magic bubble gum and when she blows a bubble it raises her up into the air and she floats to a rain forest in Mexico. With the mention of Mexico EM perks up and says I'm from Mexico and the look on his face is priceless. The resin needed to make gum comes from a tree in a rainforest in Mexico and the story tells how the resin is harvested. Day three of non-fiction was off to a slow start. I get a text message before school from Gnu and I'm nervous because a text from her at this time of day is usually not good. The text said, "I'm running late." "I'm at the CVS buying gum." "I'll be there in a couple minutes." In she walks and says, "I never realized there were so many types of bubble gum." I look at the size of the bag from CVS in her hand and say, "how much gum did you buy? "A lot because we are going to do a taste testing with the scholars." When everything was settled down after morning announcements Gnu brings out the gum and puts it on her desk. The scholars see the gum and are so excited that you'd think they won the lottery. Gnu chooses seven types of gum for each scholar to taste. She tells them the order that they'll taste them and they have to record their reaction. The first up is Double Bubble and they quickly unwrap the gum and pop it into their mouths. As they are chomping on the gum I raise my hand to get Gnu's attention. "Yes, Mr. Schultz." "Do you mind if I show them how to properly taste the gum?" "No, you go right ahead." I get their attention and using my best wine drinking Wednesday wine tasting process, I show then what to do. First, you have to carefully unwrap the gum and smell it. As I'm doing this MiniJ yells out, "it looks like Mr. Schultz is smoking a joint." As a reminder I don't make this stuff up. Upon the completion of the tasting process each scholar had to tell the class what was their favorite and least favorite gum. In case you are wondering, Orbit was chosen the most favorite. A Dyntine Ice flavored gum was the least favorite as it was way to tart for their taste buds.
It's now day four and it is about to get crazy. Gnu decided that the scholar should canvass the school to determine what the favorite gum is for various teachers. She had a list of teachers and she told each teacher in advance that our scholars would be around. As you will see shortly that was the perfect strategy. When the scholars were informed about the survey they were pretty excited. They were broken into two teams and given one each of the seven gums that they had tasted the previous day. They were given instructions on what to do and she had everyone line up at the door before we headed out. I had Wide and EM with me. Gnu had The Collector and MiniJ. Uh-Uh-Uh and NoFouls were absent. Actually NoFouls was suspended for once again fighting with his brother on the school bus. Gnu goes over the importance of behaving properly when in the hallway, no running, no loud voices and wait quietly at the teachers door and just don't barge in. Gnu left first. When we headed out the door Wide ask me where we were going. I told him and the next thing you know they are off running down the hallway. They get to the designated classroom and walk right in before I even got there. Fortunately the teacher was a special education teacher that knew the two scholars quite well and play his part perfectly. When both teams completed the survey we met back in the classroom. In total, the scholar surveyed twenty two individuals and they were pretty excited to tell who they talked to. Wide came out as the top dog because he got to go into the Big B's office and survey her.
Day five, Friday, was statistics day. Each scholar had to make a bar graph showing the results of the survey. Gnu did the preliminary work on the graph and the scholars had to tally up the results and then color in the results on their bar graph. From there we headed out to the bulletin board outside our classroom to hang the graphs. During the week Gnu, using a combination of red and white construction paper, had cut out a giant gum ball machine and stapled it to the bulletin board. She used half round plastic cups as the gum and before gluing the cups to the gum ball machine cutout she had the scholars write one fact about gum on the each plastic cup. When the scholars finished hanging their bar graph on the bulletin board Gnu added the final touch. She posted a large sign right in the middle of everything that said in case you were wondering the Big B's favorite gum was Orbit.
The scholars really enjoyed the gum chewing part and even better they learned about the table of contents, bold print, captions, headings, maps, graphs, index, and glossary. It was, just as in the past, impressive to watch Gnu in the front of the room. She taught about non-fiction books, a subject her instruction assistant had questioned, and again turned the lesson into some fun for the scholars.
We have about twenty three days left in the school year. At some point fairly soon it will be contract renewal time for Gnu. Will her contract be renewed? I certainly hope so but I'll guess we'll have to wait and see.
It's the weekend, the Friday after school drink is a gimlet. I'm out. Thanks for reading my blog.
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