The challenge answered

~ Linda G. Aragoni

Last week I asked ELA teachers if they could do this:

Did you have trouble coming up with the answer? If you did, the reason is not that you didn’t know the answer. The problem was that “question” was stated in an unfamiliar way. Here’s the answer:

The sentence that describes every sentence ever written in every language and every sentence yet to be written in every language is the definition of a sentence. That makes perfect sense once you see the answer, but most of us have to scratch our heads for a while before we realize that we know the answer.

It’s important when teaching basic information, such as the definition of a sentence, that you occasionally vary your wording. If you don’t do that, students are likely to learn definitions by rote without actually understanding what the definition means.

© 2021 Linda Gorton Aragoni