New Illness Found In Miss Roskelley's 3rd Grade

For reading time this last week my class was reading the book Ramona Forever By: Beverly Cleary.  It is a story about the life of a girl named Ramona Quimby.  One of the chapters we read talked about the Quimby family getting a new baby.  Ramona was worried about what the new baby would be like and who would have to share their room with her.  After the baby is born the family all goes to the hospital to visit and see the new bundle of joy.  Romona however is too young to visit the maternity ward and is left in the lobby to wait while her older sister and father go on ahead.  While in the lobby Ramona starts feeling sick.  She thinks she is catching some sort of disease from the hospital.  She is feeling her forehead and itching all over.  Finally a doctor sees her, runs some tests and diagnosis her to have siblingitis for which she needs a prescription of attention.  As my class and I were reading this, I was thinking this sounded pretty cute.  No one in my class even cracked a smile.  So I asked "Who knows what siblingitis is?"  A bunch of hands flew up and this is what the responses were:  "Siblingitis is where you have a really really bad cold." Says Kate  "I am just guessing but I think siblingitis is when you have all the symptoms of a cold but you are not contagious." Says Tyler  "No. Siblingitis is the opposite of that, it's when your REALLY contagious but you don't even know you are sick!" Argues Courtney.  

I was dying at this point!!  I had to tell them. so I asked "Does anyone know what the word sibling means?"  At the same time most of the class went "OOOHHHH."  and started to laugh.  We then talked about how sometimes in stories we put -itis at the ends of words to make them sound like real illnesses.  So we had some fun with this and the kids started shouting out things like "I have math-itis!" and  "I have spelling-itis!"  By the end I think everyone understood but I am sure someone went home that night worrying that they may one day get sibling-itis.