all investigative reporters should be 4th graders. they ask the hard questions because they don’t know they’re hard. and when you hear the question and you say, “excuse me?”, they don’t understand the underlying implication that they should rephrase the question or not ask it.
but today i asked for it. i did a mini lesson on questioning. questioning is one of the important keys to comprehension in reading. so i brought a carved, wooden turtle that we bought on our last trip to ethiopia. i showed it to all the students, told them to ask questions. i didn’t answer any questions until after everyone had asked lots of questions.
they asked a ton of questions. then i talked about the turtle and let them ask more questions. these questions led to more questions about ethiopia and my family. questions like, “why didn’t you adopt from haiti?” or “why did you adopt from ethiopia?”
usually, i can answer questions about why we adopted from ethiopia without skipping a beat. but when a 4th grader asks you, it is hard to simplify it to a quick answer. not to mention that i can’t talk about god, so that throws a loop in my answer.
those students keep me on my toes!
Filed under: Adoption
Yay to a successful lesson! I hope my kiddos will be able to do that… lol. It’s not your fault that you’re not blogging as much as the kids write. You’re busy!! You have a life! They may not…… yet.
I’m glad everything’s going great for you!