Learning Never Stops

T oday you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is you-er than you. --Dr. Seuss  My stomach hurts. I do not feel like getting up and going to school. My friends think I am dumb; my teachers think I am dumb. Even my parents have that look on their faces whenever they try to help me with my homework. I hate school! Why do I need to learn?! Do you know what it feels like to be in Mrs. C’s classroom? There is so much noise! I cannot work in my group table because everyone seems to be talking at the same time. They always seem to have the answers before I have even understood the question! I am dumb I guess. But Mrs. C says group work helps build collaboration skills. I wish she could come and join my group and experience what I feel. If I ask her for help, she strolls over and puts her arm around my shoulder. When I try to explain that I am finding it hard to work, she patiently explains what I have to do all over again. I see her lips moving. No sound seems

The other day I happened to come across my virtual Google friend Craig Dwyer's post  A vow of Silence  . I loved the idea! It would be great to be silent for the whole day. I had my doubts as my 8 year olds are absolutely, unequivocally irrepressible. What I did not realize is that my day's lesson plans had to be carved and moulded to suit this paradigm shift!  So if you want to try it out, keep that in mind, Comrades:) The children loved it! Something new is always greeted with widening eyes and a toothless grin. They actually did quite well apart from a few suffocated throttling noises from one of my students :) But this is not why I am writing the post. I write it for a totally different reason... A few day after our Vow of Silence episode, my students were trying to find out the perimeter and area of their silhouette using wool and post-its. They were busy and the voice level was more than the acceptable 5 on our noise-level continuum. I could hear them arguing