Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Who's on First....

Gregory brings home a different book every day. They are simple books that the kids practice at school and then have to read at home at least 3 times. His teacher said it can be to anyone, even the family cat, but he has to read the book 3 times to someone.

Tonight's book was titled, "Time for School." The teacher has explained that the kids are basically memorizing the books, but they have to follow the words with a finger as they read, developing word recognition. Occasionally Gregory is going off memory and replaces a word with another one. This time he was reading the title and tried saying, "What Time is School."

I wouldn't let him continue reading the book until he read the title correctly. I pointed to the first word, "Time" and asked, "What is that word?"

He said, "What."

I said, "No honey, let's sound it out... 'T-I-M-E.' What does that say?"

"What."

This went on for a couple minutes before I realized that no matter how I approached it, I was using the word "what" in reference to "Time" and he thought I was TELLING him "what" was the first word. In the end I simply told him that the first word was "time" and we moved on.

When he read it again, he got it right. I couldn't help thinking of Abbott and Costello.

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