(Colombian) Kids Say the Darndest Things, Part 3

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Check out (Colombian) Kids Say the Darndest Things Part 1 and 2!

In my grade 8s' first test of the year, I asked the question: "Think of two real life situations when the Pythagorean Theorem might be useful. Explain why it would be useful, and how you would use it." The question was generally very poorly done; even the best answers were things like "if i want to find the shortest route from my house to the mall", which is full of holes: am I to assume you know the lengths of the perpendicular sides of such a triangle? How did you measure them? Won't finding the shortest path involve physically walking through buildings?

Also, most of the answers were boring, like the one described above.

One student, however, gave me not one but two answers that were both well thought out and creative. I should mention that, before this, this student had not stood out at all; I thought she was fairly average. Well, she was the only student in 2 classes to ace the test. Anyway, here are her 2 responses:

• "Let's say you work back stage in a theator. in actor has to roll under a later leaning twords a prop the actor is 1 meter long (ha ha) and the prop is 3 meters high. You would use the P.T. to see how long the later has to be." (this was accompanied by a picture of a stick figure rolling between the base of the ladder and the prop)
• "Your decorating your room with a math theam you want to do a triangle out of pencils on pencil is 10 cm and an other is 15 cm you would youse the PT to find out how long the other one has to be."

Just awesome. Although, unfortunately, she missed out on the brilliant touch that once you find the 3rd side you could simply sharpen the pencil until it reaches desired length.

One time we were playing a game in class because the A/C was broken and there was no way those kids were doing anything productive. Even though I had told them they didn't have to play if they didn't want and could simply sit in the desks outside the circle of the game, one of my students felt it necessary to tell me that another student wasn't going to play because he had a problem with his - at this point he leaned close to whisper in my ear - testicles. Ironically, this was the day that I would later be kicked in the nuts.

From the department of Crazy Things Mr. Dave Says: I've gotten into the habit of calling quizzes "Quizzitos" - in Spanish, the "ito" suffix denotes a smaller/younger version of the thing, like perro = dog, perrito = puppy, also known as the diminutive. Anyway, my grade 7s are having a Quest this week - halfway between a quiz and a test. They asked me if it was a Quizzito, and I said "no, more of a Testito". Fortunately, even though Sex Ed. starts around grade 6 (in Canada, at least), the language barrier saved me.

After returning a quiz to one of my classes, a student repeatedly asked me if she had "won" or "lost" the quiz. She had lost, but I told her if she corrected her mistakes she could win it.