Thursday, June 04, 2020

What's an analogy?

Yesterday afternoon I was trying to get my (hard-working but a bit overwhelmed) nine-year-old student to pay attention to the tasks at hand in the measure he was playing. I thought immediately of sitting at a railroad crossing watching the train cars go slowly by, and it crossed my mind that once a train car has moved past my field of vision I don't think about it anymore.

Me: Have you ever been sitting in a car stopped at a railroad crossing, watching train cars go by?

Student: I don't think so.

Me: I guess I'll have to think of another analogy.

Student: What's an analogy?

1 comment:

ksh said...

This reminds me of the time I was telling a student a story that began with me hanging out laundry. At the end of the story she asked, "What's a clothes line?"