"WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

On Friday, I had two of my students read me a book called, "Crabby Cat's Phone Call." Within the book Crabby Cat answers the phone yelling, "What do you want!" Henny Hen, his friend, is on the other line and tells him that he wasn't being nice and that he needed to answer the phone more politely. The illustrations are hilarious and I was surprised that neither child seemed to find any humor in the story. Due to this lack of emotion, I assumed that the kids did not comprehend the words that they were reading (a typical problem with first graders) and asked them to tell me what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story. As we discussed, I realized that they clearly understood what was happening in the story. So then I asked them why they WOULDN"T answer the phone like Crabby Cat. The cute little girl piped in quickly by saying, "I can't answer the phone like Crabby Cat because our phone is broken. If it wasn't broken then I could answer it like Crabby Cat.” She then continues to tell me why her phone is broken. I decided then that I’d better ask the other student what his thoughts were so that I could possibly bring the conversation back around as to why one does not answer the phone like Crabby Cat. I quickly turned to the little boy and asked him why he wouldn’t answer the phone like Crabby Cat. The little boy responded, "I do answer the phone that way." I bit my lip so as not to laugh out loud. I guess I should have said, “Why SHOULDN'T we answer the phone like Crabby Cat.”