No Talking Read Online Free

paid attention to the commotion.You might think that a lot of the kids in the lunchroom already knew about the contest.
    But if you thought that, you’d be wrong. And you’d be wrong because you don’t understand just how loud , how incredibly noisy it was in the cafeteria during fifth-grade lunch. And not just on this one day. It was noisy during fifth-grade lunch every day.
    And it wasn’t noisy only at lunch. Anywhere a bunch of these fifth graders got together, the talking got out of hand.
    That’s why it’s time to tell a little more aboutthis particular set of fifth-grade kids.
    Because there’s more to tell.There’s always more.
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    A school system really is a little like the army—remember? About how kindergarten is sort of like basic training camp?
    Because kindergarten was where Dave and the other new recruits first learned the rules. They learned when to sit and when to stand, when to talk and when to hush, when to walk and when to run, when to eat, and nap, and play, and sing, and draw, and everything else.
    Because every system needs rules—no rules, no system.
    Most of the rules made perfect sense to Dave and the new recruits, especially rules like this: no fighting, no bullying, no shoving, no spitting, no biting, no stealing, no vandalism, no cutting in line, no snowball throwing, and so on.
    For most kids, the really serious rules like that weren’t hard at all.Those were the easy ones.
    The toughest rules were ones like, “No running in the halls.”
    Hard. “No disorderly behavior on the buses.” Also hard.
    â€œNo candy or chewing gum.”
    Very hard. But nowhere in the forty-four-page Laketon Elementary School Handbook did it actually say, “No whispering, chatting, talking, calling out, yelling, or shouting in classrooms, in the hallways, in the auditorium, or in the lunchroom.”
    True, there was a rule about paying attention in class. And there was a rule about being respectful. And there was a rule about being courteous at all times.
    And Dave and his classmates obeyed those rules—or at least, they thought they did. It’s just that they all seemed to think they could talk and be courteous—at the same time. And they all seemed to think they could talk and pay attention—at the same time.
    Because none of these kids really meant to be disrespectful or disobedient or discourteous. But none of them wanted to stop talking. Ever.
    In fact, this group of kids had been given a nickname by the teachers at Laketon Elementary School, and the name had stuck with them ever since they had all been in first grade together.They were “The Unshushables.”
    If Laketon Elementary School had really been like the army, then sometime—probably during
    second grade—Dave and Lynsey and all the other recruits would have been lined up out on the playground on a cold, rainy morning, and a gruff man with short hair and shiny shoes would have walked up and down in front of them, shouting right into their faces. And he would have shouted something like this:
    â€œYOU DRIVE ME CRAZY ! You call
yourselves STUDENTS ? You are a
MISERABLE MOB ! You are LOUD,
UNdisciplined, and I WILL not
tolerate your NOISE! When you walk
in MY hallways, you do not SHOUT!
You do not WAVE and YELL and
HOOT when you see your friends. At
an assembly in MY school, you do
NOT whisper and giggle and point
and wave and laugh at your own silly
jokes! And when you come to MY
lunchroom, it is NOT a free-for-all
festival of flap-jawed jibber-jabber!
Lunch is a time to SIT and be QUIET
and EAT. I am going to TEACH you
little motormouth MONSTERS proper
school MANNERS if it is THE LAST
THING I DO! DO I MAKE MYSELF
CLEAR?”
“YES, SIR!”
“QUIETER!”
“ Yes, sir !”
    But, of course, Laketon Elementary School wasn’t the army.
    However, with Mrs. Abigail Hiatt in charge, sometimes it felt that way. She was a