Listen up!

The classroom rule that is most frequently broken is number 5: raise your hand to speak. My kids get really excited about whatever it is that they have to say, and they blurt out, or talk to a friend, or otherwise interrupt the speaker, whether it's me or a classmate.

Today, I nearly broke this rule myself...and am so glad I didn't. Sometimes my students make connections to something someone else said, and then they get off topic when we don't really have time for extraneous comments. It was the end of writing time, and I was sharing with everyone how one of my students had zoomed in on a small moment by not telling about his whole trip to his cousin's house, but instead just about the part where he was looking at videos on Youtube. Another little boy raised his hand and started talking about these movies he saw. It was time to line up, so I was about to interrupt him and tell him to save his movie story for later, but I decided to let him finish. And what a finish it was.

He said, "I did the same thing too. I saw a whole bunch of movies on Saturday, but I only decided to write about the wolf movie, because that was one little moment."

Holy crap.

I have the smartest kids ever. And to think...I almost missed out on this genius little comment because it sounded irrelevant at first.

I will think twice about interrupting my students in the future.

In the words of Ruth Ayres:

Just listen.
Just listen..
Just listen.