Boom Goes the Dynamite!

Early last week the class was going through some vocabulary words in reading. The theme for that week was "Astronauts." Some of the vocabulary words included: universe, endless, realistic, and sensible. To help the students learn the words, I have them try to figure out the meaning of the words based on how they are used in a sentence. Usually the sentence gives a pretty good clue of what the word might mean and through class discussion, we come up with a good definition. We had already gone through several of the words without incident when I put the following sentence on the board:


If you are biking, wearing a helmet is sensible.


I then allowed the students about a minute to think about the sentence after I read it to them.


"Alright, does anyone know what sensible means? Or can anybody figure out what it means because of how it's used in the sentence?"


Most of the class had their hands up in the air before I finished the question. Most of the hands in the air were the 'ohh, ohh' flailing at the wrist kind, so I was confident most of the students knew what 'sensible' meant. 


"John, what do you think?"


John: "Well, I'm pretty sure that it means when you touch something (makes a poking motion)... and then it blows up. It's like this big explosion."


The entire class' eyes went from John to me, back to John, and then back to me. Several faces had smiles. Including mine. I don't usually stumble over my words and am able to come up with a kind, deflecting, "that's close, but I'm looking for something else." Not this time. I was struggling with what to tell John when Eleanor leaned over and whispered something in his ear. A huge grin crawled over his face and I knew it was safe to tell him.


"John, I hate to tell you...that's about as far off as you could be."


We went over the actual meaning of sensible, and the class had a pretty good laugh, especially John. 


Later that day as we were walking to music, I overheard a few of the boys laughing. I turned around to see the boys, including John, poking each other and saying, "I'm gonna sensible you!"