When first grade children are learning how to read many of the books they begin with use rhyming and pattern words, which make decoding a sentence easier. By following a pattern students are able to develop confidence in their reading. Many of these books contain three letter words that have short vowel sounds, such as can, fan, cat and sat. A common pattern in many primary primer books contains the -at family including cat, rat, sat, mat and fat. Many of the beginner books in my class contain phrases such as "The fat cat sat on the mat."
I have been a primary teacher for the past 4 years and have never thought twice about the impact the word fat may have on my students. Indeed the pictures portray a plump cat that is sitting on a mat. However this past week I encountered a potential problem with teaching this phrase.
Currently our class is learning about our school community and who works at our school. When visiting the high school my class got to meet Mr. B. a man of large size and stature. Upon returning to class we reviewed the people we had met that day; when we got to Mr. B's name on the list one of my little girls stated matter-of-factly, "He is fat." I quickly reacted to this statement by agreeing that Mr. B. is a big man but that it is impolite to call someone fat. We had a wonderful teaching moment about how God has created us all to look differently and to be different shapes and different sizes.
When I shared this with some of my colleagues at the end of the day it got me thinking about the terms we use to describe different things.Now in North American culture there is no harm in pointing out the obvious obesity of a cat; although in our politically correct era you would never dare point out the size of another person.
The joy of teaching small children is that they call things the way that they see them. Just that now I feel a little more for that fat cat on the mat.
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