I Can't Understand You...You're Speaking English!

This quarter at school in science my sixth graders have been studying about mixtures and solutions. At one point, they learned about what a mixture was, and how some mixtures are solutions. They also learned that some solutions can be separated by evaporation. I then assigned an at-home science investigation where I asked the kids to use different substances and see if they dissolved in water to form a solution, and if so, what happened when they tried to evaporate the solution. They could try sugar, rubbing alcohol, vegetable oil, flour, baking soda, or common substances of their choice. Then they were to create a poster showing their investigation and results. I called this their "Science Home-Extension Project."

These were due last Monday. The kids had to share their posters, much to their dismay. So I'm going down the list of the kids who remembered to turn in their project on time, and I get to one of my students, a little Ukranian girl. She is still in the English Language Learner program at our school, as I don't think she's been in America for more than two years.

She shyly gets up to share. She spoke very softly so it was hard to hear, but she proudly tells us that she titled her poster "Exmention Extantion." She then went on without skipping a beat to explain everything she did...We all sat there and thought, "What?" But no one questioned her on choice of title, which was probably good. Maybe the kids really couldn't hear her well.

This afternoon after school I was grading the projects. I had forgotten her poster. Then I came to it. Exmention Extantion? What could she mean? I still have no idea, except that the poor girl was hearing the words "solution," "evaporation," "investigation," and "extension." I think she was just unsure what all of those "-tion" words meant, and was doing the best she could to figure it out!

I just have to laugh, hearing her in my mind speaking in that thick accent, "I decide to call my poster 'Exmention Extantion!'" She was quite proud!

And by the way, her solids didn't dissolve...They "dezolt."