Great Minds Think Alike

     Sometimes I think I relate to my students a little too well.

     Today our lesson in Social Studies started with a discussion of the Greek roots of the word hemisphere, and ended with a loosely related debate over the merits of one Transformer over another.  Um . . . not something you find in the Common Core.

     I started by introducing hemisphere as a vocabulary word, and we discussed why it was  NOT, in fact, a compound word.  We then looked up sphere {ball or globe} and hemi {half}, and I posed the following question:  How many pieces to you get if you cut something in half? (response:  two!)  Then how can there be FOUR hemispheres, if the word literally means half of the globe? (lots of sharing followed...I live for these kinds of discussions!)

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      Anyway, we went on to take some notes and label the hemispheres in our notebooks, along with the continents found in each, and important lines of latitude and longitude.  As I mentioned the Prime Meridian, one of my munchkins jokingly asked if we were going to label Optimus Prime, too.  Imagine the looks of shock on the 8- and 9-year-old faces in my room as I responded with a knowing smile, "No, and we won't label Megatron, either."  

WHAT!!??!! Our teacher knows the Transformers BY NAME!!??!!

     And so began our discussion of the meaning of the word prime and why it's used to label that particular line of longitude and that particular Transformer {and what mega means, as well}.

     Am I the only one who LOVES these seemingly random connections students make to their lives?  I love knowing that more students will find it easier to remember Prime Meridian because of our seemingly "silly" discussion today.

     Since I had achieved my objective at that point and the class had their maps labeled and ready to go for tomorrow's lesson {and recess was going to start in 5 minutes}, we continued our discussion on to how I knew so much about Transformers {and Barbie, and G. I. Joe, and My Little Pony. . . }.  I think I went from "teacher-person" to just "person" today in some of my students' eyes.  

And that's only one of the reasons I love my job.

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