A quick, cute story

Yesterday in BIS I was trying to teach my grade 6 learners about encyclopedias and how to use them. I figured I would just show them that they can be fun by having them just look through to find something they think is interesting. A lot of the students were enjoying themselves, and really having fun paging through their books. But one student, Elrico, was unimpressed. He was leaning back in his chair, not even looking at the book and doing the minimum amount of work possible. Elrico is by far the coolest kid in grade 6 so of course at least two of the other boys were following suit and not participating.
I went over and picked up the book, convinced I could show him encyclopedias can be fun (wow… I’m a nerd). He had the “I” volume so I paged through to a picture of an iguana and read that they can get up to 6.5 feet long. I showed him the picture and showed him how big 6.5 feet is. He FREAKED OUT. He didn’t believe me and called all the other boys over to tell them. He was showing them the picture and the distance that I had shown him. I kept going and leafed through to “insects” and found a picture of a wasp laying its eggs inside of a living tarantula. I explained that the eggs hatch and devour the spider alive from the inside out. Once again, quite a reaction. Needless to say, I think I proved my point that encyclopedias can be interesting ☺