"Ralph the Traveling Mouse"

Or: An Update on my Students' Writing

So, we have a major mouse problem in my classroom this year. They have caught nine mice in my classroom in the last four days, including the one the custodian picked up with his bare hand as it was running across the classroom. The mice have been stealing packets of oatmeal from one of my students and eating them, packet and all, in their favorite hiding place under the microwave. And remember a few weeks ago something had crawled into the ceiling and died? Yeah, this mouse problem is major.

It's also been good for several hundred collective words! The day we saw the mouse (and my two classroom assistants screamed and ran across the room, which the kids loved), the kids went back to their writing afterward eager to add the mouse to their stories. We all did it. The mouse has become a major character in my story. Here's what he became to my students' stories:

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ONE: The evil dentist blows up the good dentist's office to get rid of the mouse, but the mouse is the only thing that survives the blast. Now the good dentist and the mouse are on a quest to steal all the evil dentist's candy.

TWO: The weather forecaster is jumping around on a desk, screaming, because there's a mouse under her desk, and people think she's trying to tell them about a scary storm moving in.

THREE: Jennifer Heather Porter put the mouse in Frankie Muniz's prison cell (don't ask) and he got mad that she played a prank on him, so he signed her up to be in the dunking booth at the carnival

FOUR: The mouse ran through the school of which Mr. Rooster is the principal. Now Violet Fern Charlotte has to get a cat to chase the mouse. But the cat is much more interested in becoming a librarian than in concerning himself with mice. (I mean, this is brilliant!)

FIVE: The mouse scared the horse. The horse ran fast. (This guy's worse than me, I'm telling you. If I wrote down what he said verbatim, every other word would be "horse." I have to keep stopping him and explaining that, yes, we're still talking about horses, but sometimes it's okay to use other words.)

SIX: The mouse is on ice skates. No more mouse. (That one rang kind of ominous, but I was a little scared to ask what she meant. Did she mean he skated away into the sunset? Did she mean he had a skating accident? Or -- *gasp* -- could she have mixed up her prepositions again and meant "under" instead of "on"?)

SEVEN: The eight-legged rat is in the kitchen. (It grew in retelling.) The teachers run screaming to their cars. The students sit and laugh.

EIGHT: The mouse scares the football player, so the cheerleader bravely picks it up and tosses it outside.

NINE: I eat french fries. The mouse hides. (I guess it's lying in wait?)