The Sword of Awesomeness

While the best word to describe my teaching methods may be "episodic", sometimes I still don't understand some of the things I do in the classroom.  I'm nothing if not visually interesting for one reason or another.  Sometimes, it involves wearing a chipmunk costume.

Others, it involves flailing my arms for no apparent reason.  Which brings me to the story of the Sword of Awesomeness.

As I was creating a spur of the moment, full-blown story for my students, one of the important items in the story became the Sword of Awesomeness.

Each time the item came up in the story, I would raise my arms in a rounded victory V sort of way.  I didn't even realize I was doing it until the students started doing the same each time I mentioned the Sword of Awesomeness.

As entertaining as it was, I didn't think much about the whole thing again until today, weeks later, when one of my students was sharing his 11 page (yes, he's a 6th grader!) imaginative story with the class.  At one point, he describes his characters battling through a hoard of zombies in order to retrieve the Sword of Awesomeness.

As he said it, he turned his attention from his paper, set it in his lap, grinned and raised his arms in the special salute.  I couldn't have been more proud.  Not only had he remembered the random thing I did and included it in his story, he also remembered the lesson and applied everything when he wrote his amazing story.  I was truly impressed.