Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind by Phillip Done Read Free Book Online Page B

children feel more grown up than writingfor the first time without picking up their pencils.
    You should hear my students when they learn new cursive letters. They squeal. They ooh and aah. They laugh when I show them
     that capitalin cursive looks like a 2. When I point out that the only difference between a capitaland a capitalis that little line in the middle, you’d think a flower just popped out of the tip of my overhead marker. When I showed this
     year’s group thatis just a lowercasewith a tail, they applauded.
    Whenever I introduce the letter formations, my students always tell me what they think the letters look like. Gina thinkslooks like a Hershey’s Kiss. To Chloe, a row of’s resembles waves. David says the bottom of alooks like a banana. Laura claims that the loop inside thelooks like a fish. Dylan thinks it looks like a corn dog.
    The one letter that I get a bit nervous about teaching is. It’s a tricky one. If I say, “And now we are going to make.” I might as well cancel school for the rest of the day because half my class will be rolling on the floor. It is always
     best when introducingto say, “We are now going to learn the LETTER.” By saying
letter
really loudly you will cut down considerably on all rolling.
    If schools wiped out cursive, what would children look at in the front of the classroom? Every third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade
     teacher in the universe puts the cursive alphabet over the whiteboard in the front of the room. It belongs up there. Just
     like the clock and the overhead screen and the American flag! And what would kids do without the laminated strips of manuscript
     letters that are taped across the top of their desks below their name tags? What would they fiddle with and pick at and scribble
     on while the teacher is talking? What would they blow their pink erasures on? Where would they put their stickers?
    Just like children have a favorite color and sport and ice cream, kids have their favorite cursive letters, too. Lowercaseis popular because it looks like a roller coaster. Capitalis always well liked because it begins with a candy cane.is a big hit because it looks like a big belly if you draw a belly button in it. Poor. I feel sorry for that little guy. No one ever picksas his favorite. It’s just too dang hard.
    One day when the children were practicing their letters, I overheard a couple of my girls talking.
    “is my specialty,” Jennifer declared, admiring how beautiful it looked on her paper. “What’s your favorite?”
    “,” answered Gina.
    “Why?” Jennifer asked.
    “It’s my first initial.”
    “Mine’s lowercase,” Sarah chimed in.
    “How come?” Jennifer said.
    “It’s easy,” Sarah replied.
    Chloe joined the others. “I like littleand big.”
    “Why?” said Gina.
    “They’re loopy. I like loopy letters.”
    Jennifer turned to Sarah. “What’s your second place?”
    “,” Sarah answered.
    “Me, too,” said Jennifer. “I’m really fast at it.”
    Some children become very attached to their own ways of writing those letters. Just this week, I noticed that Rebecca was
     forming her’s incorrectly.
    “Rebecca, let me help you with that.” I wrote aproperly on her paper. “There. You see?”
    She pulled the paper back. “I do it differently than you.”
    It’s not just students who take pride in their cursive. Teachers do, too. Bankers and lawyers and engineers have their fancy
     homes and Lexuses and stock options. Teachers have their perfect slanted writing. It’s our badge. It’s how we’re identified.
     I know the one thing I have that my doctor doesn’t is my nice cursive.
    A few days ago I was in the grocery store and found a yellow sticky note in a shopping cart. When I picked it up, I knew immediately
     that it had been written by a teacher. Her’s were not backward. Her’s were crossed. The slash in herwas not slanted the wrong way. The top of herwas not collapsing. Herwasn’t too fat. And herdid not look