1. The child made the observation that [subject-verb] word order in questions is opposite the word order in statements; his teacher praise him for being so observant.
I wrote that sentence because it was about a boy in Grade 2 that I had in my Remedial Reading class. He was referred to me by his teacher for special attention to writing sentences: he made no spaces between words and between sentences. I showed him a book at his reading level and asked him to read a paragraph, which he did. Then I asked him to look at it again and asked him if he saw the spaces between the words. "No," he said. So I took him to the copy room to watch while I photocopied the page. (Children enjoy doing this and it gives you a chance to shat about things that are of interest to the child.) Back we came and I used a highlighter to show the spaces between the words. Now he saw them, and I explained why we put in the spaces and highlighted the spaces between the sentences, between the paragraphs and around the text. His teacher was very pleased because he started spacing his own writing that very day. No one had pointed this spacing out to the boy before because it was so obvious that anyone could observe it for themselves, right?
This boy joined my group for a while, and I taught them my colour-scheme to find the Who? and Did what? of sentences. One day while I was in his class, his teacher said "He has figured out the difference between questions and statements on his own!" I praised him for being so clever. But I knew that I had been feeding the group with "obvious" information, and I knew that those repetitious lessons would pay off.
Teaching primary grades is not "playing with the babies".
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