Thoreau Sentence Reading/Re-reading

"Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half -witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third of their wit." - Thoreau

The Thoreau sentence above that we read and re-read in class was quite a confusing one. When I first read the sentence, I had no idea what it meant. It didn't seem to make any sense, and with all the dashes and spelled out numbers it took some slow reading and thinking to even try to grasp what it meant. When I read the sentence the first time, my understanding was at about a 3, out of 10. I thought the quote was somewhat funny and it made me think about math with all the numbers references.

When I read it the 2nd time, I tried to put the sentence into simpler terms. I decided that "class" meant "group together" and that "witted" referred to the person's intelligence. I turned the long, dashed, wordy numbers into actual numbers... 1.5 and .5 and .333. Doing all of that made the sentence seem shorter and less complicated. After reading it the 2nd time I felt that I had gained a better understanding of what the sentence meant, and my understanding was at a 5.

Reading it the third time didn't seem to gain me too much more understanding than the 2nd time, but did help me think about a few different meanings the sentence could have.

Collaboration with other students definitely helped me see this sentence in a few different ways that I had not thought of. Doing this exercise was very interesting because it truly made us think. You were trying to show us the types of exercises that teachers can do with their students by actually doing one with us. For us, we were really doing some serious thinking and analyzing of a sentence that was not very simple. It was a fun exercise and was a good example of what, as teachers, we can do with our students in our English classes.