Overheard in class...

"I spy with my little eye, something that begins with _B_."
"Book?...Board?...Button?...?"
"...No...No...No."
"All of the girls have them."
"...?" >>This is a totally innocent thing, right? I hope so.
"Our teacher has some: Big ones."
"...?" >>OMG, Is this innocent or not? Does he have the vocab or the guts to say that?
"Bags!" >>What a relief.

On April Fools Day, my students gave presentations. We played the human knot game. Then we played 'I Spy.' It was a good game for repetition and for practicing pronunciation.

I had played April Fools on all of my classes, telling them that we were having a big quiz. Actually the quiz is scheduled for next week. At first, they didn't believe me, but I told them to check the syllabus, and they were all freaking out and pulling out papers. It was pretty effective.

My last class of the day played a trick on me. The students in that class always have suspicious grins when I go into the classroom, but before this class it was more than usual. In fact, I was being cautious, thinking that they might have put a rubber spider in the computer console. Nothing happened. Then at the very end, I was relieved that class was over because their presentations had run a little short and I was running out of things to do. I talked for a bit about nothing important and made some announcements.

Then I said, "Ok, that's the end of class, thank you, and have a good weekend." They all stayed in their seats. So I said, "And so...that means you can go now." They said, "No, this clock is broken. It's not the end of class yet." I checked my watch and cell phone, which all said class was over. But they insisted that we still had 15 min left of the class. For one terrible moment, I felt myself almost believing, and panic set in because I knew I couldn't keep talking about nothing for 15 more min. When I realized, I said, "No, that's an April Fool's joke."

I'm actually quite flattered that they all thought of the joke and played it together at the end. It shows that they are comfortable enough to have a little fun in class.

-吴佩芙