When I was in first grade, a long long time ago, my teacher, Mrs. Wylie, used to reward all the perfect spelling tests with a lemon drop. A lemon drop? I can't believe I fell for that. I would work so hard on those spelling words just for a little piece of candy, and a sour candy to boot. As I think about that now, Steve Martin in The Jerk comes to mind, "Oh, it's a profit deal." Would that work with these 20th century-modern-day-technicological-digital-world-videohead-reality-TV-fast food-instant-gratification children? Of course. All week, when we practice, I point out the lemonhead words. Not only do you get a lemonhead if you spell all the words right, but you can get a second lemonhead if you right the two bonus words correctly. As students bring up their tests for correction I'll yell, "We have a perfect paper!" Then instruct the student to get one lemonhead. If they wrote the bonus words correctly I'll yell, "We have another double!" Now that's FUN, don't tell anyone!
3 comments:
I think Mrs. McCulloch or Mrs. Whitlach gave us lemon drops too. They were in a clear class Christmas tree jar on the desk.
Not allowed at our school now. The children get non-latex rubber erasers or latex adhesive-free stickers. My children have a fine selection of plastic bugs too.
I remember those lemonheads seemed huge and covered with sugar. These days they are little and just filled with sugar. Come to think of it, after I've mentioned sugar so much, there may be a school policy about serving these.
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