Stripes: The Crying Zebra

I find it funny how some things just come to my mind during school and then work amazingly well. I call that the grace of God! :) Well today my students were extra talkative. I told them that they should not ignore our zebra friend who tells us what talking is allowed on our stoplight. The zebra (Stripes, as my students originally named him) usually stays on "No Talking" except for fruit break and group work time.

Well I was in a silly mood today and said, "Please stop ignoring Stripes. He will soon start to cry and leave a puddle on our white board which will be messy." The kids and I laughed at this and then I thought...."Hey! What if he really does start to cry every time they ignore him??" So when my students ignored him again, I walked over to the board, picked up the blue marker and began drawing tears coming down from Stripes. The kids laughed until I drew three lines on the board: "1 minute", "2 minutes", and at the very bottom "5 minutes". I explained that if Stripes' tears reached one of those lines that would be how much recess time we would lose that afternoon.

Seems a little young for third grade, but it was silly enough and novel enough that it seemed to work. Well...okay we got down to 3 minutes on the tears scale and so sat quietly for three minutes during our recess time. Longest three minutes of my life. My students looked miserable too - which was kind of a good thing I think as they seemed to understand.

So, that is my tale of crazy ideas and Stripes the Crying Zebra. :)