The Latest

So…another week in teaching. That means one thing: another big round of papers to grade. I’ve actually been very impressed so far. The latest stars are K & L , friends, and both funny and quite good.

K caught my attention when I was reading his last grammar assignment. His job was to list the 23 helping verbs and use each in a sentence. I kid you not, his sentences were the following:

Greg is murdering space pirates.
Fred was shooting killer octopuses all day long. (we’ll learn latin plurals later)
You were burning down buildings with torches!
Have you had a knife shoved down your throat before?
Shall I burn your cat?
I will give you the old knuckleball!
You should die.
I may shove a knife into your head.
I might beat you up tomorrow.
I must win.
I can kill you.
I could shoot you if I had a gun.

Can you say 13-year-old boy? I love the fact that these are the FIRST thing he thought of!

So as I’m still laughing at this, I read his paper:

“Clay is our family stinker. This is the child who would take the baby powder and throw it all over his room for fun. Or he would open the window, tear the screen, and throw everything in his bedroom out the window. He is crazy wild.”

Not a bad description. Butter the teacher up with laughter, you get a good grade. Works every time.

Then L’s paper:

“If there were a word to describe my two-year-old sister, it would be brown: brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin, brown. However, there is something special to her browness. Her eyes are like two grand chocolates, fringed with dark lashes, big as gumballs.”

I love that – don’t you? It totally says “I’m take-a-million-pictures-of-me-cute so my teenage brothers can’t resist writing about me” without being cliche. Yay for A’s!