Magic Scraper

There are many potential distractions at literacy centers. There's a kid at another table tapping his pencil and the girl next to you reading aloud a poem. Kids are walking across the room to get materials and the vocabulary game on the computer is rather hard to take your eyes off of. The guided reading group has just started a new book you really want to read and then you overhear someone talking about How to Train Your Dragon while they should be reading Time for Kids. Everyone once in a while someone spills a bunch of letter blocks on the floor at the spelling center, and it's all you can do to focus on your writing.


And then today we get this.



Everyone's eyes were glued to the window, and ten of the kids were halfway to having their bodies do the same. I figured we should probably just spend a few quality minutes watching the ultimate fascination that is window washing. After a few minutes of staring at these poor guys out our second story window, I was in no way expecting my "back to centers" countdown to actually work to tear anyone away, but somehow it did. Most kids actually got back to reading/writing/current events-ing, but it was just too tempting for some.

"Does he have a magic scraper?" asked Alexis when she should have been reading at guided reading. "Yes" I answered when I should have been making her get back to reading at guided reading. "It's called a squeegee." An even more magnificent word than she probably had ever imagined.