april fools

I teach second grade and want to play an april fools joke on my students. What can I do? I was thinking about hiding their chairs. Any good ideas? Are you doing something for your students?

 

Ooooooo...I want ideas too!

 

You could raise their desks up higher?

 

Piles and piles of work waiting for them!!!

 

I did this last year and it worked! I told the kids that at 12:03 p.m. that Jupiter and Saturn would be in alignment and if they jump they will feel weighlessness just like the astronauts. Our principal even got into it and jumped with them to make it more believable. It was great to see all of them jump!

 

I give my students a wordsearch that doesn't have any words in it. I leave it on their desks for morning work and they spend FOREVER trying to find the words. It is sooo much fun!

http://www.chrisdunmire.com/fun/worlds.hardest.puzzles.shtml

 

Here are some ......
-Tell them that you are giving in your 2 week notice...

-Let them know that there will be no more homework...

-Tell them that there is no school on Thursday, due to an emergency meeting for the teachers....

-Let them know that ALL their parents will be joining them for lunch today...

***Last but not the least...

-Tell them that they will ALL have to bring in their own lunches because the cafeteria will be closed for a week.

Have fun and hope you can fool a lot of them,
Rebel1

 

I am totally stealing this!!!

 

OMG! That word search is sooo mine. My kids will go crazy! They are such pleasers, it will make them crazy to not be able to do it! I can't decide between the word seach and the crossword. Hmm, the torturing decisions...

I like the jumping thing too! We do an end of the day meeting with the whole elementary, that would be fun to do with everyone. UNFORTUNATELY, I have a stupid meeting tomorrow and won't be there! DANG!

 

When I was in grade school, my parents tried to convince me that, for that one year, there was no April 1st. When i went to the calendar and tried to show it to them, they tried to convince me the calendar was wrong. They were very convincing but it didn't work

 

Oh, I'm doing that word search! We have just finished a week of testing, the kids are exhausted, and if I tell them I have a fun word search since they've all been working so hard, they will totally believe it!

I wonder how many of them will tell me they are "finished!" I have one student who would do that -- say he finished it, and want something else to do.

I'm already laughing.

 

We are 6 hours ahead of you but last week I circulated a letter from 'Google Earth' stating that they were re-photographing the planets for a new website and they wanted groups of people to lay on the ground and spell out messages for the satellite to pick up. Guess what? The camera will be flying over our school during recess on the 1st April!

 

Oooo, Blazer: you're clearly waaaay ahead of your students!

"6 hours ahead of you", who? Here's a nifty link for time zones: http://www.worldtimezone.com/index24.php.

 

Love these ideas. The grade 8 teacher and I are still fine-tuning our prank for his class. I have a great prank for some of the grade 8 boys I work with. Due to their Learning Disabilities, they are able to be exempted from the compulsory French credit in high school. I have a memo from the high school to share with them today stating that due to changes in board and ministry of education policy, this exemption will no longer be available and that all students will need to take French. We'll have to spend some time this morning re-submitting their course selections. (Cover your ears at around 11:00am as there may be some inappropriate language bursting out of them as I share this news--which they will be spoken to about!). :lol:

 

I went one step further. Not only do I prank my students, this year I am pranking my assistant. I had the office call her yesterday at dismissal and tell her we will be getting two new behavior students today (twins). I gave her the night to digest and prepare for that. Now I am in the process of texting her and telling her that I am sick and won't be in today.

 

Caught out a high ability yr 11 set (Sophomore) and a low ability set of the same age with the wordsearch. In fact the low ability kids claimed they had found some of the words (poor things)! Also sent one kid to find the janitor to get a bucket of steam from the school boilers for the science experiment. Got quite a few photos of some kids lying out on the field making images for the satellite as well. Including a group of very able kids who were quite taken in! They had arranged themselves into a smiley face shape!

Other staff sent a procession of kids up to the science dept for a 'long weight (wait). We had them lined up outside the preproom waiting!

I've no doubt that our woodshop teachers will have sent kids to get some new bubbles for the spirit levels and some left handed hammers!

 

Don't forget to grab a brick stretcher while you're at it.

 

Just made some copies of the word searches. We'll do them as a group challenge with a great prize for the fastest group to finish!

 

I told my 6th grade kids that because of schedule changes (MCAS has changed are entire schedule for this week and next) they would be the "lucky" class that got to have art every single day for specials.

I actually felt bad when some of the kids were disappointed when I said April Fool's. They were pretty impressed when I "got" them because teachers had been claiming that they were going to switch schools for April Fool's and at the start of class they announced very confidently that I wasn't going to "get" them with that trick.

Now I have to think of something for my 1st, 4th, and 7th grades. Maybe since it's testing season I'll tell the older ones that all specials will be canceled so that they can have extra time prepping for math MCAS. They'll LOVE that.

 

I pretended to read from a memo that the school board had voted for year round school beginning the 2nd week of June. I told my students that they would only get 2 weeks off for summer vacation! They bought it hook, line, and sinker! Some sat there with their mouths open in shock, others looked as if they might CRY! I asked them if they liked it, and of course, they moaned in protest. I said that's good because it's an April Fool! Boy were they happy and relieved! ; ) I know that I would cry if they told me that!

 

Every single one of these April Fools has got me laughing!

 

As I write this, my first graders are doing one of the impossible word searches.

Oddly, they are actually claiming to find words.

However, these are kids who could probably make a square peg actually fit into a round hole.

 

I gave my kids a phony spelling test with words like photosynthesis and precipitation on it. The last four words on the test were did, I, fool, you. They were so focused on the test, that they didn't even catch it right away. I was super serious and told them how important it was and I expected everyone to make a 100.

My second grade teacher did this to me way back when and I still remember it to this day.

 

That one made me LOL. I could see myself in 2nd grade trying that.
It would have had me going nuts...............

 

The best ever school related April Fool that I ever knew involved a collegue at a previous school. He was on a year's exchange programme with an Australian teacher. The exchange ran from January through to December. Australia of course are 12 hours ahead of the UK. Imagine the panic of the Head Teacher (Principal) when he received a fax from the Principal of the school in Australia where my colleage was supposed to be working. The fax asked if we knew of the wherabouts of our teacher as he had failed to turn up in January and every attempt to track him down had failed. Thus the school in Australia would be billing our school for the cost of 3 months substitution teaching and as we were keeping their teacher in our school until December they would be expecting our school to pay the Sub's wages until our teacher turned up or their teacher returned! The bill so far being in the region of $15K! Our head teacher was rushing round school asking the friends of the missing teacher if they had heard off him or knew where he might be. Then he looked again at the fax and right at the top was the date 1st April (of course it was still the 31st March in the UK)!

 

That is great! The time difference really adds to the trick.

 

I remember when I was a senior in high school we took the wheels off of the golf cart that one of the assistant P drove around in for April fools...it was also one of our senior pranks....it nearly got us sespended...I miss those days

 

The grade 7/8 class decided that they would take the door off the grade 6/7 homeroom at one of my schools today. They got in a lot of trouble. They even said that they had gotten permission when they hadn't.

 

My first graders currently think that I'm quitting today. I decided that they've given me h*** this year and that I deserve an opportunity to pay them back just this once...

 

So I gave them the word search, and they sweated over it for about 15 minutes and I told them.

Now, in a short while, 8th grade helpers come in. At that time, all the kids will get out their word searches and start wanting the 8th graders to help them find the words. I even said they can look real frustrated over it if they want.

 

This is fantastic! I'm saving it for next year. I gave them bogus (and impossibly hard) spelling words today.

 

This one happened just today at school - we're still laughing about it!!

Our school has a policy that doesn't allow students to use cell phones during the school day - they are to be turned off and if we catch a student using a cell phone, we confiscate it and they can get it back from the office at the end of the day. If they are caught with it again, then a parent has to pick up the cell phone.



So at the beginning of one of my colleagues classes today, a cell phone rings. He gets angry and stalks over to where the ring came from. He finds the phone in the kleenex box, answers it and no one is there. Another phone then rings, he goes to the sound and finds it in a file slot, answers it and no one is there. Another phone rings, a kid answers it, and the caller wants to talk to the teacher. The teacher says hello and no one is there. This repeats for about 3 more phones. He is laughing at this point because he has realized it was a joke. The funny part was there was a girl in his class supposedly taking still shots for a slide show at the end of the year, when is reality, she was videoing the whole event. He didn't realize she was taping until about the last phone!!! Our tech teacher was the one making the calls and had worked with the students to set the whole thing off. The teacher ended up confiscating 6 phones! I wish I could post the video, but student confidentiality rules prevent it. The joke was so funny because no one got hurt or were made fun of. Good memories!!

 

My grade 8s fell for my trick totally and completely. They were angry, upset and worried for about 15 minutes when I "rescued" them by pulling them out of class to give them memos to take home. When they opened the notes they read, "GOTCHA!". They then, of course, tried to convince me that they knew all along that I was kidding--they were SO fooled!!!

 

This is exactly what I did. It was really very, very funny! They were trying so hard to find the words, and had strategized about who would find what. Some of my co-workers came in and could hardly contain themselves! Finally, one girl looked up and said, "This is a joke, isn't Mrs. J?" The kids had a very good laugh over it.

Final score for the day was the kids 3, me 9.

I win. As it should be.

 

But best prank played today was me to the P. I have two parents in my room that are parents from you-know-what. One has actually sued the school in the past. No problems this year, but no one wants to get on this parent's bad side. He's got his last kid in my class, and the boy is actually a very nice boy. Nevertheless, he is a boy and sometimes gets a bit too exuberant.

About ten o'clock, I sent the boy up to the office with a fake behavior referral. My co-worker prepped the scene by walking him up there and telling him to sit in the office area. The P. asked her why he was there, and she whispered, "I think he got in trouble in Ms. J's class." The P. apparently rolled his eyes. Then he called for the boy, who sat there squirming with a sorrowful look on his face. The P. started in on him, asking him what possessed him to kick one of my autistic boys (whose parent happens to be the other parent from you-know where). My student played it well (but told me later he was so nervous).

Then the P walked out to get the telephone number, came back in, and picked up the phone to call the dad. I'm am very sure he was dreading the call, and was cursing me, but since I rarely send kids to the office for misbehavior, he knew it was serious enough to call. He was also in between a rock and a hard place. Which parent do you seriously annoy?

The boy was under strict instructions from me to stop him before he made the call. Sure enough, just as the P. dialed the first number, my boy said, "Uh, Mr. P?" "Yes?" "Um, April Fool's?"

Apparently the P. sat there stunned for a minute, then said, "She got me, didn't she?"

Ahhhh, sweet revenge. He has played so many pranks on us since he's been there! It was the talk of the school...someone finally got him back.

The only other time we ever got him was when one of the PTO officers got ahold of the keys to his car while others distracted him, moved the car out to the front of the school, and put a for sale sign on it with the number to his office.

He didn't know it was gone until he got a call from two fellows who had stopped to look at it. He looks out the window and sees them down by his car....

 

I pulled a non-April fools prank last week. Our school had a "Writing Night" last night for parents to come learn about what the standards are for writing and how they can help their child. Invitations to this writing night went out with the report cards last Monday. On Tuesday morning (after the invitations had gone out to the whole school) I got the secretary to print out a copy of the invitation for me, but to change the spelling of "your" to "you" so it read "Learn how to help you child"

I took it to my VP who hates spelling mistakes just as much as I do. I went up to her with the invitation in hand, and asked her "did this go home yet?" (knowing full well it had) She FLIPPED! It was hysterical. She's just started talking to me again :lol:

 

I did the word searches on 3 different classes. The first class had a boy with a severe reading/word retention disability that just sat there observing everyone and avoiding work. When the kid he looks up to said it was too hard, he was he only kid the entire day that made the connection to April Fool's Day. He stunned me because he did it in less than 5 minutes.

The next group knew something was up but upon my direction consulted each other further. Then I wrote, "April Fools" on the board and waited for them to notice.

The third group was done by my teacher. She kept the class going for 25 minutes. They had some GOOD strategies but none were working. One child mentions to another child that she thought it might be a trick but the other child said, "think positive" and they kept going. After 25 minutes the teacher typed on the SmartBoard asking if they would like a hint. Of course they all said yes! The next slide told them it was April Fools. They hooted and hollared and tore up their papers and pretended to be outraged. One student was upset but it was because she had never heard of April Fools Day and didnt understand what was going on.

The last group wrote the teacher a note and said they were going to hide as their joke. I thought that was funny (and safer than running off without telling) so the teacher played along.

 

I also did the word search on my class. I just handed it out and was doing stuff around the room trying not to laugh while one of my students with ADHD, who is VERY outspoken, kept saying how hard it was at first.

After about ten minutes of silence looking for the words, one of my students raised his hand, and said that the girl sitting next to him found the word April Fools. They still didn't get it yet! I just said, "Oh, really?" So then I asked them why they didn't have any words yet. Finally one of my students asked if it was an April Fool's joke. It was so funny!

 

I came into my classroom this morning to find all of my desks turned upside down and many of the things at the front of my room at the back of my room and vice versa. Oh, and my students were sitting on the floor.

It was very cute. (cute in a good way, not a sarcastic way).

 

Principal came in today, picked up my chicken salad sandwich that I had for lunch, and ate a big bite out of it. He told me that was only the beginning.