Great Teaching Moment

After a talk with my co-teacher today, it was decided that I would kick off the lesson on Observations today. I have a PowerPoint I made for my self-contained kids, and I figured I could breeze through it with the team-taught class in half the time.

The lesson kicked off really well. The kids liked the PowerPoint, my colorful word signs, and really appreciated the chance to yell in school (I like to do some 'call and answer' techniques to keep kids awake). I think my co-teacher liked it too, because she got to see a different teaching style than her own.

I was high on a lesson gone right when we hit the practice examples. The first of which, is a picture of a squid attacking a piece of bait. The kids ooh'd and aah'd and thrust their hands up eager to participate.  The first couple gave me good Qualitative examples (color, etc), so I asked for a few Quantitative observations next (counting and measuring). One girl in the front of the class almost bounced out of her seat trying to volunteer, so I called on her.

"IT HAS EIGHT TESTICLES!"

The class was silent. I stood there for a blink or two, processing.

"You mean tentacles."

I had been hyper, trying to rev up the class' interest in learning, but I managed to put on my 'teacher face' for that instant. There was no way I could make the class 'unhear' her comment, so I quickly moved things along while they were still realizing just what she'd yelled out.

"Great! Are there any other things in this picture you can count? Anyone else? Yes, you in the back..."

I got things moving along and prevented an uproar, but there was some sporadic giggling and hushed laughter. Poor kid. How's that for embarrassing the first quarter of school? Hopefully, she'll be able to look back and laugh later. I heard my co-teacher's next class giggled when they saw the squid...

I feel sorry for the kid, but the whole situation is incredibly funny. That squid picture in my PowerPoint will forever live in infamy in my memory! I went the rest of the day without talking about it for fear of a kid overhearing, but my co-teacher and I had a good laugh after school.  It's not every day a kid belts out a testicle count of eight in a science class!