My students take these regular vocabulary quizzes, one component of which is to use the word in a sentence. However, often times because of constraints on what can be covered in class, they’re left to their own devices in coming up with a good sentence to use for a given word.
The result can be some rather unusual sentences, either unintentionally funny or poetically incoherent. In the first category: “The dog appealed behind the tree.” In the latter: “this sheep is sink, soon.”
In other classroom humor, my most advanced class (an intimate five students)… we’re talking about some subject they’re not all finding terribly interesting – the US civil war, maybe? – and I look over and notice some rather insane 3-year-old-style scribbling/doodling on the broad face of the page of the book we have open. Just a mishmash of swirly lines and boxes and dark blotches all across the text. A brutal commentary on the quality of the text? Sharing his level of interest in the class?
So, I call his and his classmates’ attention to the scribbling. And without missing a beat, he says, “This is cubism, teacher. I’m expressing myself.”
This brilliant display of adaptive language skill is a genuine delight, and I can’t stop myself from laughing for the remainder of the class.
No matter how boring it is, I’m going to try to post something every single day this month. So prepare yourself, dear readers, for some truly banal content!
