Laptops and Homophones

By Vita Forest

At school, during Literacy groups, where three different activities run concurrently under my leadership and another is outside reading with a parent, we had, what you might call, an incident.

Martin, at ten years old, was becoming frustrated with a program he was interacting with on a laptop.  The cursor was not cooperating.  His responses were not being recorded.  He couldn’t move around the screen as he wished.  Some of his peers looked up like meerkats and turned their heads in his direction, while other class members jumped up to look over his shoulder and offer suggestions.  But all too soon, his muttering and irritation escalated into shouting and rage.  Along with the increase in volume, came a quickly accelerating wave and then explosion of fury which saw him slam down the lid of the laptop and raise it above his head all the better to hurl it across the room…

“Martin!” I shrieked with obvious great authority and calmness.

It was all I could do, being across the other side of the room deeply involved in deciphering his classmates’ handwriting and how they were responding to the latest chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Luckily it distracted him long enough to hesitate and in that moment of hesitation I was able to sprint across the distance and gently press the weapon back down onto the benign surface of the desk.  He took some deep breaths and blinked.

‘Do you need to get some fresh air?’ I asked in a quieter tone, kneeling beside him.

He nodded and stood and marched out of the classroom.  I sent an extremely calm student out to follow him on his walk.

The meerkats returned to their work and the classroom returned to the more normal level of noise for Literacy Groups.  Martin returned after ten minutes walking in the sunshine, calmer, with his earlier meltdown forgotten.

Later, as I was marking the stack of books containing the students’ responses to ‘Troublesome Homophones’, I came across the following sentence used by Jason to demonstrate his knowledge of thecorrect way of spelling ‘there’  “The laptop was thrown over there.”

I called him over to my desk and pointed to the sentence nodding in appreciation.

‘Good use of ‘there’,’ I said.

He grinned.

‘I like to look around and get inspiration from what’s going on around me,’ he said.

Indeed.

Overhead… in the playground

By Vita Forest

This is from last week but too good not to share.

While on playground duty I was approached by a very small boy.  He addressed me with these words, ‘Excuse me, have you seen any dried blood?  I need it for my master.’

I had not, so he went on his way, while i wondered who was his master and if we were harbouring any vampires in our midst…

Homework sentences

By Vita Forest

Actually not by Vita Forest – these are a selection of homework sentences from my class this week…  (the main focus were words that change their form completely when a plural is made).

“Men are different to women because they get head lice more often and have bigger feet.”

“Twins are very similar to each other.”

“One man wearing a bright orange shirt stood out in a group of men wearing black uniforms.”

“A teaspoon and a tablespoon have a similar shape.”

“The climate in Sydney is really hot and there is a bit of lighting (sic).”

“I watched some similar YouTube clips they were all about this dude that jumped off London Bridge.”

“Most people in my class don’t have lice.”

Thank goodness for that…

Everyday more geckos

By Vita Forest

For the last two weeks

A strange phenomena

A gang of geckos in my classroom.

They march up the walls

Keeping watch over the rubbish bin.

They peer at the whiteboard

Their sticky toes hugging the frame.

Some particularly curious ones watch me work at my computer

They must tell their friends –

Everyday more geckos.

And on the back wall by a Boy table and under the Indigenous language map

An army has appeared

Everyday more geckos

One clings to the clock and listens to its tock

They crawl up the windows

Every size, every colour, every pattern

When will it end?

Everyday more geckos.

We need that girl

By Vita Forest

While carrying a bag of cat litter through the supermarket

I was startled when three pigeons swooped up

the Jams and Spreads Aisle

Over the Fruit and Veg

And across to the Frozen Food section.

 

Three birds!

In this underground supermarket!

Taking off and flying over the shelves in formation

As if migrating together over rows of tall buildings

All the same height.

 

And I thought

How did they get in?

And I thought

How will they get out?

 

And I thought

We need that girl from school

That wide-eyed uncertain girl

peering sideways, talking hesitantly

But she certainly knew what to do

That time on playground duty when a group of breathless girls

Ran to report

A mynah bird in the classroom!

It couldn’t get out!

 

I advised opening blinds and windows

And carefully herding it toward freedom.

But this girl, this uncertain girl

Marched into the classroom

Swooped down on the anxious mynah

Cradled it in her hands

Walked determinedly outside

And released it.

“Wow!” I thought

(“She has chickens,” I was told.)

 

But today

we need that girl again.

In the underground supermarket

Can someone make the announcement on the loudspeaker please?

She is needed in Aisle 12

Near the Frozen Fruit.

 

 

Isaboe sits in strange receptacles

By Vita Forest

A tote tray full of tests to be marked

On the sewing basket

In a fruit bowl…

and her favourite – cardboard boxes

Tee hee

Overheard… in the playground

By Vita Forest

Eric: Ms F! Ms F! There’s a banana and a cockroach in the funeral.

Me: What?

Eric: There’s a banana and a cockroach in the funeral!

Me: I have no idea what you are talking about.

Eric: The funeral, you know – where you stand?

Me: Where you stand?

Eric: In the boys’ toilets…

Me: Ah the urinal.

Eric: Yeah, the funeral.

(Much laughing…)

Mobile Tales Despatch 4 – a fishing expedition

By Vita Forest

In which Christabel is alerted to a passing school of Parmesan cheese.

Christabel opened her eyes, suddenly alert. If she was not so suddenly distracted, she may have pondered that it was indeed strange that it was her eyes that reacted to the stimulus, when it was her sense of smell that had been awakened.  Her nostrils prickled.  Yes, there could be no doubt.  The People Below were eating cheese.  The sharp, tangy aroma drifted up to the galleon on the eddies from the deep, spiralling up past the domain of the whales, leaping up from the very surface of the water and through the open window of Christabel’s cabin.

She leapt from her slumber (an afternoon siesta – these late spring days could be so draining) and spun around in order to locate her Cheese Hunting Equipment. An operation of this sort demanded nerves of steel, the right tools (kept near at hand and in good working order) and a skill honed over years.

Luckily Christabel possessed all three. For though she verged on the jittery, there was nothing like the promise of Parmesan to sharpen her resolve.  As luck would have it, Christabel had, that very morning, found a delicate length of black cotton floating by the good ship Possession.  She had fished it out of the water with her butterfly net, attached it with a sturdy knot to her existing fishing line, and added a sharp hook made from a silver pin to its end.  All this before the heat and humidity sent her scurrying below deck with a wet hankerchief draped over her face.

Now she tiptoed up the stairs carrying her periscope and fishing line. She peered down into the depths of The Tabletop.  They were still eating, The Three.  When there was three, there was more chance of mess, more chance of pebbles of Parmesan to fly from the pasta, from a travelling fork, from a moist morsel of bolognaise sauce.  The conditions were perfect, she just had to bide her time and hope that the table was not cleared too quickly (or too thoroughly).

The meal progressed slowly, with the garbled sounds of speech rising upward, causing the ship to rock slightly and spin on its anchor in the ceiling. Christabel was forced to move from the port to the starboard side, but she quickly set up her watch again.  She was not flustered, she would remain calm and patient.  It would not do to fish too early or too late.  Timing was everything.

As the minutes passed, she tuned her ears to the slightest flick!the slightest pat! which signalled a wayward crumb of cheese on The Tablecloth. She located three.  Would there be time to get them all?  Was it better to concentrate on one?  Different scenarios and options scurried about her mind – but patience, patience! she reminded herself.

At last the opportunity came, one of the people left for The Kitchen carrying her plate, one left for The Bathroom and the other one left to answer a phone. There were two plates left abandoned, simply wallowing in cheese!  Christabel swung the fishing line over the edge of the ship and watched the line unravel, watched the silver hook, spin lower and lower, until…

It hit the plate with a tiny Ping!

She stopped.  Would the whales be alerted?  She had to work quickly.  She worked the hook around and around, drawing circles over and over again and catching up a bounty of cheese as she did so.

There were footsteps – she must hurry!

With all her might, Christabel heaved and heaved her catch up off the plate, up off the ocean floor, up through The Deep, through the currents, through the shallows, until it burst out into the air and over the side of the ship.

She sat on the deck of the boat for a moment to catch her breath.

Success!

There would be feasting tonight…

Mobile Tales – A Despatch from The Good Ship Possession

By Vita Forest

In which we first meet sailor Christabel La Mouse aboard The Good Ship Possession.

Christabel grasped the side of the ship in her soft green leather gloves, took a deep breath and peered over the edge.  It always took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the distance.  Through the gentle eddies that spun the bow softly this way and that, descending deep into the silence of the drop-off, before flattening and nudging out into the dark expanses of the

Tabletop and Tablecloth.

It was dark most days down there, with its rain-splatter circles, the sort you would see on the surface of a still lake if you were sheltering beside it, beneath a pagoda, with a cup of green tea and the time to stop and notice such things.  The dark memories of those raindrops were sprinkled over with animals – horses, does, butterflies, and, Christabel’s particular favourite, the hummingbird.  There it was!  Right below her today.  For the hummingbird had the unsettling habit of moving about.  One day she would look down on the port-side to see the reassuring little creature, only to panic at its apparent disappearance.  A quick scamper to the starboard side of the ship however, revealed that the bird was still in the depths of Tablecloth, merely having hovered over a little.

Or was it the ship itself that had moved?  But no, the galleon did not change course, though it spun on the axis of its anchor which had curiously been flung from the top of the mast and lay wedged securely into the Ceiling above it.

Most disturbing of all was the morning Christabel had leaned over the side of the ship in her usual morning ritual and found that the Tablecloth had been completely erased.  No raindrops, no animals, nothing but the bottomless void of white that seemed to have no beginning and no end.  The Tabletop.

She had spent the remainder of that day resting in her cabin below deck, curtains drawn, with a cold compress resting on her forehead.

Luckily the Deep Darkness of Tablecloth returned the next day, complete with its cantering clouds of horses, butterflies and hummingbird.

Christabel straightened her back and pulled out the spyglass from the strap across her chest.  She faced north now and turned the brass cylinder in front of her eye until the flying fish came into focus.  They lived across the expanse, closer to the Distant Doorway and were sometimes battered most ferociously by the breeze that blew into the room on warm days.  When the door was closed, they circled lazily, as they were doing now, always maintaining a respectful and steady distance between the members of the small school of four.

Christabel lowered her spyglass and smiled.  It would be another calm day on the Ceiling.

Overheard… at the Sydney Opera House

By Vita Forest

Max (on entering the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House for a large combined schools musical performance): Aw ma gawd! You know what scares me? That many kids with that many recorders!

It was actually very lovely.