The Romans built Agu-Ducks

I'm enjoying this school year so much, that I can barely believe we're halfway through November. I'm afraid that if I blink, it'll be the end of the year already. I'm not nearly ready for that. That's not to say there aren't still challenges. 

On Wednesday, one student walked into the classroom in the morning, looked at the schedule, dramatically sighed, and exclaimed, "Ugh! We have math today. I hate math!" I was thinking, Dearie, we've had math every day so far this year, and we're going to have it every day for the rest of the year. Get used to it.

I guess I should realize by now that when I tell students not to worry about correct spelling for words like "aqueducts" and "conquered" on their social studies test, they really don't... much to my amusement. It's a good thing I knew what they meant:

The Romans built _____________.

agunducks 

akadus 

acwaducks 

ocwabocks 

aqcduxs 

Agu-Ducks  

"I came, I saw, I _______________."

quntend 

cucer 

concord 

conkerd 

Okay, to be fair, some of those spellings actually make more sense than the correct spelling. I also had an honest student who wrote, "I could not get the answer so I skipped it."

After five years of teaching, classes still manage to do new things to surprise me. For example, one day they were listening to Adventures in Odyssey, as they do every day at lunchtime. Apparently there was a prearranged plan, because all of a sudden at a certain point in the theme song, half of the class got out of their chairs and hid underneath their desks. Although now I appreciate the creativity a little bit more, at the time I did not think it was funny. (No wonder it takes so long for some of them to finish their lunches.)

Another day I gave directions to the students to "Write your answers on paper." One boy quietly said, "On your head!" At the time, I didn't think that was funny, either. Now that I stop and think about it, I guess I wouldn't have had to say "on paper." Either way, he didn't follow directions: he wrote his answers on his hand, which I realized when I called on him and he glanced at his hand for the answer.