Success Redefined

One of my fourth graders has a really tough time sitting still. He insists that he thinks best when he's dribbling a ball up and down my hallway. He invented this annoying game called "Hitball," and he has the uncanny knack of deciding to play it as soon as Oliver hits REM sleep during naptime. I'll be creeping and shushing my way through the house with a basket of laundry when, like clockwork, I hear the dreaded thud! thud! thud! of a dirty old deck hockey ball being hurled at my stairs in the latest round of Hitball. I drop the basket and skid like a maniac toward the stairs, shushing furiously, but it is always too late. REM sleep is broken, furious cries erupt from the nursery, and lo and behold, I'm teaching math to four different kids with a cranky baby on my hip.

Being this kid's mom is a schizophrenic experience. I often simultaneously want to hug him and shake him. On a recent morning I was running behind, so I wrote three sentences on the board for the fourth graders to diagram. The plan was that I would take a three minute shower and Oliver would remain in REM sleep. My sixth grade resident grammar scholar was on standby to assist in my stead if questions arose. A few minutes later I emerged from my room to check on their work. One of the fourth graders had neatly and efficiently diagrammed the sentences on his notebook paper, per my request. The other had abandoned his paper and had written, sloppily, on the white board instead.

These are the sentences he was told to diagram:

This is what he did instead:

At least he knew he had created an interrogative sentence that began with an interjection. Success, redefined.