Where popcorn comes from

Another kid story:

A couple nights ago at my teaching table, I had a 6th grader working on learning to write essays and a kindergartener(?) learning how to read. While Clarence, the 6th grader, was coming up with ideas for his paper about good friends, Darien, the little guy, was about to read a book about popcorn.

It's good to get kids thinking about what they are going to read before they read it so that they can connect their prior knowledge with the stuff they're about to learn, so I asked Darien what he knew about popcorn. Having already read the book in a previous lesson with a different teacher, Darien practically had the story memorized, so I turned his attention to popcorn itself by asking, "where does popcorn come from?"

Darien thought a minute then replied in all earnestness, "popcorn comes from cows, doesn't it?"

What a delight to be able to enlighten someone about something simple for a change! We used the word itself (a compound word, in case you didn't know it, dear reader . . . whoever you may or may not be) to deduce that popcorn came from corn. Clarence threw in his pre-school theory that it came from some fanciful place filled with all good things to eat (a theory he, of course, has not held for a very long time). And the mystery was solved.

A few minutes later, Clarence was still wondering how to put into words what a good friend is like, and Darien was helping him out with such insightful comments as "a friend is someone who doesn't say you're stupid" and Clarence was writing those comments down, too, along with his own.

All-in-all, we learned a lot that night. The next time I saw him, Darien still remembered where corn comes from, and Clarence remembered Darien as the kid who thought popcorn came from cows.

So, what have you learned today? =)