Those darn English words

Part of my reading assignments are vocabulary words from the book. I give the students a list of words from the reading that they are responsible for. They know these words are free game for quiz questions.

Well, the question was "What is the meaning of austerity?"
Student: "Austerity means to stair astray."

Life in 5th & 6th grade

Life with 5th and 6th graders is never dull. There aren't enough hours in the day for me to blog all the ridiculous and yet serious answers they give on homework and tests. On a math test I recently gave, there was a rather difficult problem. All but one of my students attempted some sort of answer. The one that didn't simply put a frowny face. Understood, kid.


Because I teach both 5th and 6th grade, spelling tests can tend to get tricky. I give them at the same time and toggle back and forth between grades: "fifth grade your word is...." Periodically during the test I check to make sure everyone is tracking. Yesterday I even repeated the ENTIRE list for each grade at the end. The students turned in their tests but one came and personally handed his test to me: "I have an extra word in here and I listened while you read our list but I couldn't figure out what was off. So you're gonna have to figure it out." So much for me teaching them responsibility...