Adventures in fourth grade, part 8.

Last Friday, I was puttering around the front of the classroom doing something very important and teacher-y when a student came up to me.

"I have a problem," he said.

"Yes?" I responded.

He gestured to his shoe. The laces were untied. "I don't know how to tie my shoes."

Uh . . . come again?

Turns out he's always worn shoes with Velcro straps because he never learned to tie his shoes. I attempted to talk him through the steps to tie his own shoe the first two times his laces were untied. The third time, I gave up and tied them myself.

Pretty sure one of the reasons I decided to teach fourth grade is precisely so I wouldn't have to tie shoes. Alas.

* * * 

During spelling today, we were focusing on blends at the beginning of words. I instructed each table to think of words that started with a specific blend and then write clues so the other students could guess which words they wrote. One of the tables was assigned the "pr" blend.

One particularly resourceful student went straight to the dictionary and started looking up words. Good for him, right?

Until the first two words he read aloud were "prostate" and "prostitute."

I couldn't turn the page fast enough. "How about protractor?" I suggested. "We have those in our classroom!" Not to mention they're a little less likely to bring about phone calls from angry parents.