Five Minute Friday: The After-noon Jitters

Giants Bobble Heads: horizontal (Photo credit: Lynn Friedman)

It’s Five Minute Friday time!  Remember you too can join in this “writing flash mob” and/or do it with your students.  It’s a simple and quick free writing exercise.  Read my post introducing Five Minute Friday for details on how to participate.  Also, check out how to incorporate Five Minute Friday with creating interactive posters for the “Writing Process”.

Set aside five minutes of free writing time to join me on writing about “After”, today’s topic.  Remember I’m applying my Five Minute Friday posts toward education and work, but you can write about anything about “After” that sparks your interest.

Start…

Up, down, up, down, and round and round they go.  The daily ritual of sometime after-noon has the choir of bobbling heads is seen bouncing about.  I hold my composure with a straight serious face (professionally), but every part of me (inwardly) wants to bust out laughing because it is too funny.  The jitters, the itchy crazy jitters that cannot be contained explode and take over the room.  It’s the itchy crazy jitters of restless children eager and ready to go home that causes this sometime after-noon rubber room-like madness. 

It’s a sight to see, a sight to behold!  It makes every part of me inwardly giggle with laughter.  I hold my chin high with a composed face so they can’t catch on to my inward amusement, and ask them to quietly hold still with no movement and no chattering.  They look at me with the “ut oh” face like saying “what did we do…are we in trouble”.  I stand thinking, “if only they knew.”  I then motion my hands and ask them to quietly stand up.  I whisper, “Are you having a good after-noon?”  They say “yes” looking at me with blank and confused faces because they don’t know what is going on.  They are still worried they are in trouble.  I whisper, “Are you all ready?”  Some ask “what?”  I say, “to act silly and bust a move!”  I begin making silly faces and sounds and ask them to copy.  We stop our feet, shake, turn in circles, clap our hands and so it goes.  We shake out the itchy jitters with silly faces, laughter and movement.  My kids break out in laughter because it’s so fun and so amusing.  My fun-hearted silly side comes out when we do this.  

One thing in teaching I have learned is that there is a time for seriousness and there is a time for humor.  There is a time for the serious teacher face and a time to let it go.  You have to have humor!  And so that is how the the Itchy After-noon Jitters Dance came about.  

Stop! 

Note: During Five Minute Friday, you are not supposed to stop to make any edits.  Free writing without stopping is the purpose.  Notice there are errors in my Five Minute Friday writing above.  These errors will not be edited because editing them would defeat the purpose of Five Minute Friday.  Part of the reason I’m featuring Five Minute Friday on adaptivelearnin is to teach students how to write without anxiety.  I want them to see the errors to show them that errors are okay to make during free writing.  I want this to be an educational experience for them.  Feel free to use this or my other FMF posts as examples in lessons if you wish.  Happy Friday!

• Five Minute Friday: Celebratory Rest (adaptivelearnin.wordpress.com)
• Anxiety-Free Writing: Five Minute Friday and Glogging (edu.glogster.com)
• Five Minute Friday: Home (adaptivelearnin.wordpress.com)