Abigail's Awesome Answer

One of our family's favorite things to do during supper each night (throughout the school year) is to share the assignments, homework, projects, tests, newsletters, handouts, etc., that the girls bring home each day from their teachers. They unload their backpacks, and while we eat, Susan and I go through the stacks with the girls.

We "ooh" and "ah" over their good scores and prompt them to reflect on their errors and plan for doing better on the next such assignment or test. We discuss their report cards and behavior reports and quiz them on their spelling word lists and compliment them on their art projects and sign the forms that require parent signatures and ask them to explain what they're studying when we see their study guides and bug collection project instructions and maps to color and books to read.

We listen to their stories about the school day and about their friends and the kids who frustrated them on the playground and the goings-on in their classrooms. We also help them talk through their after-supper and before-breakfast plans: who will read what before bedtime, who will need help studying over breakfast for an upcoming quiz, who has no homework and will instead get right to practicing her piano lessons after supper, etc. It's a good use of time not only to eat but also to bond as a family and stay informed about our children's lives away from us during the day.

That was a lot of set-up for this amusing anecdote:

Abigail brought home a handout that her teacher gave her class of third-graders to provide them practice reading and using a product manual. The handout defines "manual" at the top ("contains directions that help readers use or understand something") and then includes an excerpt from a bicycle manual followed by five questions that the students were to answer by referring to the information in the excerpt. One section of the manual is titled, "Filling a Tire with Air"; here it is in its entirety:

Locate the nozzle on the inside rim of the tire. Remove the cap from the nozzle. Attach a standard bicycle pump to the nozzle. Use the pump as directed. Fill the tire until it is firm. Remove the pump. Replace the cap and screw it tightly in place.

Question #5 corresponds to this excerpt and asks, "What tool would you use to fill a tire with air?" Abigail's answer? Nope, not "bicycle pump."

She wrote, "air compressor."

The teacher did not mark Abigail's answer wrong. Should she have? After all, Abigail did not take the information from the excerpt and use it to answer the question. Clearly, "bicycle pump" is the "correct" answer, according to the bicycle manual provided. And the instructions do specify, "Use the bicycle manual page to answer the questions."

The teacher must have inferred that Abigail was relying on personal experience, not the manual, to answer the question. Daddy uses an air compressor to fill bicycle tires at her house; that was the correct answer, manual be damned! An A+ for the teacher for not marking Abigail's answer wrong. Abigail's response certainly revealed to the teacher Abigail's knowledge, and it likely brought a smile to her face, too. It made Susan and me laugh out loud, that's for sure.