A very special series of operations took place Sept. 27 at St. Rose School … by an enthusiastic group of first-grader surgeons.
As part of teacher Bridget Killeen’s language lesson, the Belmar Catholic school youngsters completed a hands-on lesson about the creation and use of contractions. Children learned a special “Contraction Song” song, sung to the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” which taught them:
“I’m the first word, don’t change me…when you change the second word, a shorter word you’ll see… certain letters are taken out, one word will remain.”
Equipped with a foil tray of “instruments” (scissors, bandages and a glue stick), each boy and girl donned blue surgical masks and oversized purple latex surgical gloves to ready themselves for the task. Their manila folder “patient files” assigned them pairs of words that could be turned into contractions and instructions to snip away the extra letters, put a bandage emblazoned with an apostrophe over the “cut,” and use the new word in a sentence.
The operations had a 100 percent survival rate, reported Killeen. “The students really enjoyed it.”