C is for cookie

I hate grading math homework. Haaaaate it. Which means that I usually put it off until I have three or four day's worth and finally buckle down and check it in one fell swoop. Which takes forever and makes me vow I'll start having the students check their own, until the next day when we just don't have time to go over it in class. And the cycle continues.

Perhaps I'm a bad teacher. Especially as evidenced by my class's average on the math benchmark test they took today. Nothing like grading failed math tests to make me feel like an awesome teacher.

But I digress.

Every now and then I come across something in a student's math homework that makes me smile. Like the student who showed her work on the back of a piece of paper printed from lds.org.  And this multiplication word problem written by one of my students, for instance:

"Mrs. Erickson made cookies. Each batch has 99 cookies. She makes 99 batches. How many cookies did Mrs. Erickson bake in all? Answer: 9,801."

I hope I'm not planning on keeping all those cookies for myself! Also, can you imagine making that many cookies in one sitting? I think I might perish from exhaustion.

Here's a word problem of my own creation:

"Mrs. Erickson has 26 students in her class. She has 7 more math and language arts assignments to grade. Not all of her students have turned in their assignments on time. She also has a smattering of late work she needs to grade. How many assignments does she need to correct, and how long will it take?"