Not Rocket Science

Kids these days. They just don't realize the importance of context clues. The Pony spends the majority of his time with his head in a book, his laptop, or his phone. I doubt that my students are much different. Except for the book part. They don't have time to rationalize. They need that instant gratification.

We have been reading Science World magazine. The cover story is about Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees. Other articles cover various branches of science, subjects from space satellites to the uses of the element sodium.

I give assignments on the material we discuss. One of the most popular is a 30-question crossword puzzle. While students stop short of making up words to fill in some blanks, I fear that they are not taking a step back to consider the context of the question. To see if their answer makes sense.

For example, they had a question about primates. A gorilla, a chimp, or an orangutan might be referred to as a Great _________. Remember, they had a four-page article on this topic. I know they read it, because we read it out loud in class. The puzzle had three blanks for the letters. Most students had the first and last letter from other clues. So they were looking for an answer to fill in: A__E.

Well. Who knew? Apparently, many high school students refer to a gorilla, a chimp, or an orangutan as a Great ABE! And some of those Great Abes must be really ripped, because a few people think of them as Great ABS!

Another simple (in my mind) word crossed the Great A__E boxes. We don't really want to discuss those baseball officials who work behind home plate, calling balls and strikes, sometimes ridiculed by the fans: the UMBS.