I do a screening with Kindergartners to see how their speech-language skills are developing. There's this part where I have to get them to say certain words in order to hear how they produce the sounds.
HAT, HAT, all I want them to do is say HAT. My prompt, "When it's cold outside you wear a coat, gloves, and a _ _ _." I say this as I am pointing to my head.
HAT, HAT, all I want them to do is say HAT. My prompt, "When it's cold outside you wear a coat, gloves, and a _ _ _." I say this as I am pointing to my head.
Kid #1 response, "A toboggan." Oh poor kid. He only understood the cold part, totally missed the prompt of me pointing to my head. I corrected the young lad, explaining a toboggan is something you ride down a hill in the snow; you know like a sled.
Kid #2 response, "A toboggan." WOW! That's the second kid that said that. Kinda weird. Did they go to preschool? Again, I corrected this child and moved on.
I had a couple more students make the same mistake. Well they are only Kindergartners, they live in Virginia, there's not much snow here . . . I made excuses for them.
A few weeks later I found myself in the room when the preschool teacher was giving instructions for an activity. I was listening with one ear as she identified the different winter clothing items.
"Coat, mittens, scarf, toboggan, boots, snow pants . . . "
My ears perked up. WHAT . . . wait . . . did she just say toboggan? I looked up and sure enough there was a picture of a winter hat.
Surely she must have misspoke. Is this where all the Kindergartners got it from? It stemmed from preschool? Not wanting this class to mislearn the vocabulary I enquired. And sure enough . . . toboggan is a term they use for a winter hat. Who would have thought . . . not me.
I was dumbfounded. They were right. All those kids I thought were mixed-up. This . . . this stocking cap was their toboggan.
I grew up in Michigan, of course I knew what a toboggan was. But did I really? I knew what my toboggan was. And they knew what their toboggan was. But our toboggans were not the same.
I thought they were mixed up. They probably thought I was crazy.
English is one language, but we cannot forget the great dialectical variance it has.
Rojelio & Annie enjoying the first snowfall of the year in their nice warm toboggans.
3 comments:
people in virginia are weird. You need to come back to grand rapids!!
Kelly
that is really funny! I hope the kids passed their test! In MN, the kids go "sliding" down the hill as opposed to "sledding" down the hill. But, they do use a toboggan, or sled, or saucer, or a cardboard box.
I wonder if any of the kids in Virgina ever ran their toboggans into a tree? I can see it now a line of kids running down a hill head first with their toboggans on. Just think you don't really need snow.
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