More adventures in teaching...

I sure enjoyed my Christmas break from school. I'll confess, I dreaded going back (who wouldn't enjoy vacation?), but after only one week I'm totally back in the swing of things. Last Friday (Fridays are always interesting in junior high!) in Pre-Algebra we were working on writing equations from words (for example, "The sum of x and five equals 4." would be x + 5 = 4). At the very end, I challenged them to write their own word problem/story for "h - 28 = 32." To help them brainstorm we talked about what "h" could be (horses, houses, hippies, hippopotamus (whatever the plural of that is!), etc.). We were all laughing by the time we were done! Here were some of their creations (the last is my favorite):

"The horse rancher had some horses. He lost 29 off a cliff, but one survived. If 32 survived, how many did he have originally?"

"Heffelump the Heffelump lost 28 pets. He now has 32. How many pets did he have?"

"There were hobos. 28 of them died, so now there's 32 left. How many were there?"

"There were a bunch of hippies at a party. 28 of them left. Now there are 32. How many were at the party?"

"There were some hobos riding hippos. 28 got stomped on. Now there are 32 left. How many are there."

I suppose if you're looking for Dave Barry creations, you've come to the wrong place, but after a long day of solving math problems, I guess it's easy to find things to laugh at! Oh, and the most ironic part was that I didn't ask them to solve the problem and some kids were dying to tell me the answer! I love junior high (on good days)!