Sometimes, the most productive and gratifying lesson doesn’t happen in the classroom. Today, it happened after dismissal when I was watching my son tuck into his lunch. Got the weakest kid to stand beside me and try various grammar MCQs for good measure. Actually, her proficiency wasn’t as dire as one might have expected based on the paper score. Anyway, it was no use crying over split milk. On another note, I went through the mistakes for the Direct -> Reported Speech worksheet for the most outspoken student. It was meant to be homework, but she had already placed it on the teacher’s table before the bell rang. A testament to how motivated she was. Direct -> Reported Speech questions are popularly asked in their graduating exam, so maybe my precious consultation would go towards attaining a good score.

At home, I tested the boy who was able to recall a synonym of “desperately”: “urgently”. Sensei sure does monitor the progress of his students as if they were his flesh and blood.

Gave the son a relative pronoun question. Wasn’t surprised that he got it wrong. Since I anticipated his wrong response, I let loose an explanation about how “who” follows after a person and how “which” is paired with an animal. I thought that that was that and mentally shifted to other areas of my life. The son then floored me with his remark.

“But humans are primates,” he said.

Okay, science guy. You win.