Oh, the Adventures of 6th Grade

Wanna hear the dumb things that my kids did today?

1) We had to take a reading quiz where the kids had to fill in the blank with a correct word from a choice of 3 words. This particular quiz was 3 pages long. The copy machines at my school are controlled by the devil and I ended up with copies that had page 1, 2, 3, 1 stapled together. Easy fix. "Okay guys, you do page 1, 2, and 3, and then on the back it's the same as page 1, so you DON'T have to do it." I had at least 3 kids come up to me and say, "Miss G, this page is like the same as the first one, do I have to do it?" or "Miss G, I just realized that I did the same page twice. Is that okay?"
What I say in my head: Yeah it's ok, you just wasted your own time and brain power. If you'd have listened to me you would have know you didn't have to do it. 
What I really say: "Yeah, I told you already that you didn't have to do it."

2) In the morning we played a review game for math. I read the questions directly off the test. Later that afternoon we were doing some more math review and I told the kids, "I've got a secret...the problems that I used this morning were straight from the test." "So those hard problems are on there?" "Yup. So I hope you were paying attention to how to solve them and that you'll study your practice test tonight."
Then I stopped and glared at the group in the back of the classroom that talked nonstop today. "Shh! Oh, uh, sorry Ms. G. What was your secret?" I just stared at them for a minute. Then I shrugged. "I already told my secret, sorry if you missed it." "What?! Wait! We're listening now, what was it?!" Hands popped up all over the room because some students actually were listening to what I said. "No, put your hands down. I already told my secret, too bad that they missed it. They'll never know." Then the cool kid stood up and said, "Don't worry teacher, I know the secret. You have a boyfriend!" and then he sat down. Hmm, that is a really good secret, because not even I knew that one. I did actually chuckle a a little and shook my head. "Nice try, but not the right secret." "Come on Miss G, why don't you just tell us?" "Yeah, can't we just tell them?" I stared them down. "No. I'm trying to prove the point that I find it really annoying that people think they can just talk while I'm talking and that it's ok." I got some blank stares for a second, and then I saw the look in their eyes as the understanding registered and someone said, "Oh...that's a really good idea." Umm, yes. I'm the teacher. All my ideas are good.

If I thought harder I'd come up with more, but that's all I got for now. Back to grading.