Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Sometimes Specificity Matters



“Name the Tudors we’ve been discussing,” I asked S., my hand hovering over the white board to record the names she gave me.

Quickly she responded with, “Henry VIII, Mary, Elizabeth, Edward.”

“Great!” I said. “Now put them in order.”

“I did.”

I started to correct her, then realized that she had named Henry’s three children in order…by age.

“Ah,” I said. “Put them in order of their reigns.”

She chuckled and said “Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth.” Right again, and a great reminder to me that specificity can be important when asking questions.

2 comments:

Erin said...

Also a reminder of how many different ways things can be grouped or arranged! Will is especially into the Tudors and tried to get me to watch the show, but I found that it featured a few too many creative torture/execution devices for my liking... But I bet he could come up with a bunch of different ways to arrange those folks!

Beth said...

I'm sure he could! For instance, you could arrange some of the Tudors into categories depending on how they died! ;-)