Recently I was substitute teaching in a fourth-grade classroom in my alma mater elementary school where I went to elementary school. I was in the classroom that was formerly Mister Gibb’s fifth-grade classroom when I was across the hall in Missus Bassford’s fifth-grade classroom. It was only a few days before summer vacation, and the kids were anxious for their summer play.
As a sub, I am usually limited to what the regular teacher wants their students to do. This day, one activity the regular teacher was having me have the students do was to make a “memories” book where they were supposed to make a list of things from the prior year in an academic way.
One of those items for the students to do was to “list three nouns that describe you”.
One student came up to me and she said that she didn’t understand the problem.
I asked her if she knew what a noun was, and she barely understood, so explained that a noun was, a person, place, thing, or idea.
She couldn’t think of any nouns that described her.
I asked her if she had mass. She was puzzled and I explained that mass is a property that all things have. I picked up a paperclip and showed it to her and explained that it had mass and so too did she and she seemed to understand somewhat and wrote down that she had mass.
I asked her if she was a human, and she quickly agreed that she was indeed a human, and she wrote “human “ for her second noun.
Finally, I asked if she was a vertebrate and she had only a limited idea of what that word meant. She at first seems to have thought that a vertebrate is someone who’s backbone was visible. I told her, no, a vertebrate is an animal with a backbone whether it’s a human, a dog, or a fish. She understood and wrote down for her third noun that she was a vertebrate.*
Monday I will complete my substitute teaching year teaching kindergarten in the very same classroom in which I myself went to kindergarten.
#jtg
* I wonder if she saw some media that influenced her initial definition of the word “vertebrate”. Also possible is she’s seen a “visible human” model where the bones and organs are visible through a transparent plastic.