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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Wednesday, March 24, 2010


There have been times when I'm teaching that I find myself doing quite a fascinating in-depth study of whatever question asked of me. The child, on the other hand, has lost me a long time ago and wonders how a simple question needed 10 minutes of explanation! Today was such a day.


I began my phonics class by going over the double consonant rule: When a word ends in ck or a double consonant, you say the sound only once. I used the words "duck" and "tell"--I wasn't too concerned with the ck part of the rule, but focused more on the double consonants. I told them that double just meant 2 of something; like twins (we have a set of fraternal twins).This is basically the conversation I had with my students:


One my students piped up, "I'm a twin!"

"No, you're not." I said, "Twins are born at the same time."

Another one claimed to be a twin to his sister. Oh, my, now what?

"You and your sister are not twins. Twins are babies who were in their mother's tummy at the same time. You are older than your sister." I then talked about the twins in the first grade and how they are both the same age.

The same student than looks behind him and says, "He's my twin! We're both 4!" OH, MY.

"He is not your twin because he isn't even your brother." I was stressing again that twins were born at the same time from the same mom, when I just stopped mid-explanation. Do they really need to have double consonants compared to twins???

"Class, when you have two of the same letters, you say the sound only once."


We went back to our examples on the board and on our seatwork--they did fine, and I probably could have used my breath for some other problem :)

2 comments:

Christina Renshaw said...

Ah! That is adorable! Isn't it amazing how many questions they have? It seems like a teacher always has to think of new creative ways to explain the oddest things to little children.

Unknown said...

That is so true!