Conferencing
We had a chat in English I today about the mad dog scene.
I was helping the kids see the significance of this seemingly out-of-nowhere scene. Students’ reaction to the chapter was fairly unified:
S1: It opened up a lot of questions to me about Atticus; what was his past life? How did he have the knowledge to shoot, and how did he shoot so well?
S2: I was in shock, mostly because of how I was pondering it’s relevance to the book. The act it’s self didn’t perturb me but it did show how close the community is.
Once I got the kids to see that the scene is there to set up one way that Atticus has, contrary to his children’s view, hero qualities in the traditional sense (read: macho sense), we’re ready for them to understand why he kept it under wraps for so long. (The Mrs. Dubose scene is critical for that.)
At the end of the conversation, one student asked me about our dog. (When experimenting with Flipgrid, I made a video for the kids, and in it, I showed them our dog.) There was a bit of a misunderstanding in our conversation today, though:
S1: How’s your dog?
Mr. Scott: She’s in heaven
S1: Wait, did she die???
Mr. Scott: She’s never had so much attention or gone on so many walks
S1: OH
S2: I was worried.
S3: I thought she died too-
S4: O I thought you meant she died
It struck me as odd that they thought I might use a phrase like “She’s in heaven” to tell them the dog had died.
Apologizing
We go on a walk just about every single evening these days, and when we come back, if we have time, the kids want to play a game. Monopoly has held a monopoly lately, but today, the Girl talked E into trying Sorry again.
She was probably sorry she did.
E jumped into the lead and before almost any of us had more than one pawn in the “Home” circle, he had three. And his remaining pawn was stuck at “Start.” Forever. And ever. So long that we all caught up to him.
I have to admit, I was really rooting for him. When I drew I “One,” which would have allowed him to start moving, I wished I could slip it back in the deck for him. He’s so frustrated with board games because he never seems to win.
I wasn’t exactly helping L, though. I Sorry’ed her a couple of times, and at least once, when I drew the “Move forward ten or back one” card, I moved back one just to knock her back to start. Part of it was to see how she dealt with frustration. She did admirably well — that girl is growing up. (Slowly, but I guess we wouldn’t have it any other way. Well, about most aspects.)
The game kept going until it was a four-way tie: all four of us had three of our four pawns in the “Home” circle and the other pawn three or four moves away from victory. K stole the win from E, which is fair in a sense: in Monopoly, we’ve taken to calling her “slum lord” because of her property choices and indebtedness. She deserved a win. (Though she did come out fairly strong on the last time we played Monopoly…)
“Can we play for second?” L asked.
I somehow managed to get second place, which I really didn’t want. Again, hoping for the Boy to get a little bit of an upset.
“Can we play for third?” the Girl asked.
And the Boy swooped in to steal third.