D.O.L. and D.O.M.

When I was in elementary school, my teachers had us start the day by doing D.O.L.s and D.O.Ms. These little lessons stood for Daily Oral Language and Daily Oral Math and would be written on the board when we came in the classroom in the morning. As students, we were expected to write down our answers in or D.O.L. and D.O.M. notebooks as we came into class and listened to the morning announcements. Then, the teacher would stand in front of the board and go over the answers.

I don't remember anything about the D.O.M.s, but I have distinct recollections of the D.O.Ls.

Usually, they were sentences like this:

do you want two come too the store with me to by some plane flower jeremy asked johnny

The students would, of course, write the sentence correctly. Then, when we went over the sentence the students could correct their mistakes. If I remember correctly, my teachers would even have us raise our hands to identify corrections that needed to be made, and then we could go up and make those corrections on the board. So, by the end of the exercise, the sentence would look like this:

"Do you want to go to the store with me to buy some plain flour?" Jeremy asked Johnny.

D.O.L.s were one of the best things about my elementary education. They are the reason I am so critical of written language and why I often think, "Oh come on! Didn't you learn anything in elementary school?" when I see things like "alot" and "could of gone." Those sorts of things make me want to stand at the chalkboard and smugly make the corrections. Unfortunately, I don't often see those on a chalkboard or a piece of paper; I see them on computer screens where I cannot fix them.