I love the little tidbits that the kids come up with as they engage more with the world. At a recent meal, Griffin noted that the word because is spelled one way, but is often spoken a different way: ’cause. He knew that he should spell out the full word in writing, but he wondered what he should do if he were writing the words that someone else said (i.e., quoted dialogue). This led to a great conversation about written dialogue and how the conventions of writing don’t always match the conventions of speech.

This would have been a great discussion topic in English workshop with 8th graders, so it was a real treat to have it spontaneously emerge from our 3rd grader’s ever-curious mind.