Maybe We Need to Review the Basics

Sometimes my students aren't at their brightest.

Student 1 was having trouble with some subtraction. It turns out that when he borrowed from the 5, he turned it into a 3. Further inspection showed that he did it twice.

Then student 2 was doing a spelling test. I told him there were 14 words so he numbered his page. He was surprised when he got to the end and there was still one more word. When I checked his page, I pointed out that some people include the number 11 when they're counting.

Student 1 laughed at student 2, and then asked, "Yeah...what number comes before 10?"

Sigh. Not their brightest that night, but at least willing to laugh at themselves.