April 6th, 2017. I show one of my students how to use the ink and paper dictionary instead of googling. She flips to the word she wants and sees a picture on the same page.
What I wrote that day:
"Ms. Maddack, it's a narwhal!"
Me, the obnoxious literalist: "Mmhmm! Well, it's an illustration, not a photo, but..."
"Wait, a real narwhal?"
"Yeah."
"Narwhals are real?"
"Yes!"
"I didn't know that!"
"Isn't that cool?!"
Or how I remembered it a year later:
Student: "I thought dictionaries only printed real things."
"Yes?"
"Then why is there a picture of a Narwhal in here?"
"...Narwhals are real."
"Narwhals exist?!"
"Yes! You didn't know that?"
"No!"
"This is so exciting!"
Witnessing a student learning that narwhals are REAL and not just the unicorns of the sea is definitely in my top ten moments of working with junior high kids. And why SHOULD she have thought they were real? They're compared to unicorns all the time and she couldn't have seen them in any zoo.
What I wrote that day:
"Ms. Maddack, it's a narwhal!"
Me, the obnoxious literalist: "Mmhmm! Well, it's an illustration, not a photo, but..."
"Wait, a real narwhal?"
"Yeah."
"Narwhals are real?"
"Yes!"
"I didn't know that!"
"Isn't that cool?!"
Or how I remembered it a year later:
Student: "I thought dictionaries only printed real things."
"Yes?"
"Then why is there a picture of a Narwhal in here?"
"...Narwhals are real."
"Narwhals exist?!"
"Yes! You didn't know that?"
"No!"
"This is so exciting!"
Witnessing a student learning that narwhals are REAL and not just the unicorns of the sea is definitely in my top ten moments of working with junior high kids. And why SHOULD she have thought they were real? They're compared to unicorns all the time and she couldn't have seen them in any zoo.