Third grade

For all the exhaustion and dailiness of it, third grade delights me.

One little girl who really struggles with school work but has the biggest heart and most infectious smile you'll ever see, was working on her Chromebook, doing Lexia, which is a reading program.  She likes to come and sit at my desk for moral support so I was watching her peripherally.  She would do the sign of the cross and look heavenward before pressing enter when she was spelling words.

I love the mixed up words they use.  I was playing Go Fish with a small reading group, working on controlled r words.  The kids mostly call it Goldfish.

"Do you have storm?"

"Goldfish."

"Do you have girl?"

"Goldfish."

One of the boys was delighted to come across the word fork.  He said, "Like Fork Knife!"

I think he meant Fortnite.  I prefer fork knife.

Also, a lot of them call their backpacks "pack packs."  The other day it was lightly snowing after school and one girl was stressed about her library books.  She said, "I forgot my pack pack!  What am I going to do?"

I showed her how to put the books inside her coat and hold it closed around them.  She looked at me like I was an inventive genius.

Third graders are such an easy crowd.

They are also incredibly earnest.  One little guy is the English speaker in his family.  Over a series of days he and I were able to set up his mom's parent teacher conference (and I have an interpreter lined up for the meeting).  I would write down information in words he could read and understand to explain to his mom about the conference.  He had me write down every available time so he could see which his mom preferred.  He came back the next day and said, "3:15 on Tuesday."

"3:15 on Tuesday?" I asked.

He solemnly said, "Yes."

And I knew he was right because he's the kind of kid that remembers everything.

Third grade also ties my tongue up sometimes, particularly vocabulary lessons.

Descendants was one of our vocabulary words.  Have you ever tried explaining that to eight year olds?  "So people you're related to?"  "People older than you?"  "People younger than you?"

One student, a wise cracker who is sarcastic and lazy and incredibly, incredibly smart, understood what I was explaining.  He said, "Your offspring!"

"Yes," I said.  "Your offspring."

Another student said, "I have no idea what that means."

I drew a family tree on the board.  "These are my grandparents," I said.  I wrote Harvey and Margaret on the board.  (I didn't want to confuse them by writing my grandma named Thelma.)  I drew 7 lines representing their children.  I pointed to which was my dad.  I said, "This is my dad Mark and he married Coralee."

"Mark!" they exclaimed.  (Because of the whole hero worship of Mark that happens for reasons beyond understanding.)

I drew 6 lines.  "These are their children."

"Which is you?"

I pointed to the second line.  "I married Adam and we have three kids."  I drew three lines.

They said, "Mark."

One of the girls (because the girls are fascinated by her) said, "And Emma."

Another student said, "Don't you have another one too?"

(I considered how much it would disappoint Braeden to know he was an afterthought.  He's used to being the firstborn center of attention.)

I pointed to the family tree and said, "These are all Harvey and Margaret's descendants."

It all seemed to make sense.  They were nodding their heads in understanding.

Then one boy raised his hand and said, "So when did it begin?  Who were the first people?"

Um.

I said, "Well, people who are Christians believe that Adam and Eve were the first people.  Then there are people who have other ideas."  I'm 99% sure they are all on board with Adam and Eve plus I really didn't want to get into a whole discussion about creation vs. evolution.

Besides we had other vocabulary words to cover.

Another vocabulary word was pioneers.

I talked about pioneers in medicine and technology and talked about the crossed-the-plains kind of pioneers.  (Living in Utah, where we have Pioneer Day, I didn't think this would be a hard concept but it seemed to be.)

I explained that pioneers were people that had gone before.  I almost said that pioneers were the first ones to go West, but then I saw them and about half of them are not white and it seemed like a disservice to tell them the pioneers were the first people to go West when there were actually people already there.

I walked over to the map and showed them the size of the United States before the westward expansion.  I assured them the land was still there (we've gone down that path before), but most Americans lived in the East.

I explained, explained, explained.

Sometimes vocabulary time takes way longer than I expect it to take.