31 Funny Ways Students Misinterpreted School Assignments

‘The art teacher wanted 12 thumbnail sketches, one girl drew her thumbnail 12 times’
31 Funny Ways Students Misinterpreted School Assignments

One of the many wonderful things about children is their ability to remind you that a different way of thinking about things is always possible. Case in point: A Redditor was tasked with giving a mandatory state writing test to fourth graders, and the prompt was related to Native Americans and ears of corn. One student, not familiar with the phrase, wrote an entire sci-fi story about a kid whose ears get transformed into corncobs. By the end of the tale, the kid was shouting, “What? I can’t hear you! I have EARS of CORN!” 

Not only is that a funny misinterpretation, but the story sounds better than anything in theaters today. 

Other Redditors have remembered the times they, or children they knew, misinterpreted things to hilarious results, including a lot of kids who think the Middle Ages is something else entirely.

kosembnihat 8y ago E Edited 8y ago In my history class, a friend of mine was assigned a presentation on Abraham. Somehow, not being a native english speaker and not knowing who Abraham is, he spelled Abraham wrong and Google suggest the word is 'A Brahman' so he ended up doing a presentation on Brahman and the Cast system. The teacher was like WTF and stopped him half way. It was fucking hilarious.
Gone_Green 9y ago . Obligatory I am not a teacher... One day in Spanish class we were doing presentations and it was this guy's turn. The teacher said 'avienta te' which is a phrase used to tell people 'do your best'. But its literal translation means 'throw your self' so the guy just stood up and threw himself to the ground. 171 ...
VaginalOdour 9y ago When I was in high school career class, the assignment was to write a paper on our dream job and how we could get there. One guy wanted to be a farmer, but instead of writing about how he would do it, he wrote his whole paper on how to properly milk a cow. 162 ...
JawasBuiltMyHotRod 8y ago Taught world history 6th grade. About 5 years ago I had my kids write a mock journal about an archaeological dig. Had a kid go so far as to glue her tooth that fell out the day before to her paper as an artifact/fossil. 242 ...
Redgiant54 9y ago this will probably get buried but here it goes. One time I needed to name a graph. It just said name the graph as part of the math assignment. I named the graph Brad. Teacher didn't like it. 195 ...
TasteySoap 8y ago e Not a teacher, but in middle school I thought my teacher asked us to write papers on the transcendental railroad I wrote half of it before I realized she probably said transcontinental railroad instead. + 1.7K ...
MelisSassenach 9y ago I'm the student but I was in improv as a teenager and our coach split us up into groups of three and was having us do like teamwork exercises. so one of them was tie your shoelaces together as the rest of the groups physically tied their shoe laces to the other members' shoe laces my group just tied our laces together as in at the same time as a group. our coach was impressed/baffled + 677 ...
brainstorm42 9y ago 6 A teacher whose first language wasn't English asked us to submit an assignment in distinct pieces of paper, meaning, well, that the each of the two parts should be in its own sheet of paper. Guy next to me turns in two pieces of differently colored, differently sized pieces of paper. 119 ...
OpiWrites 9y ago Student here: Recently, we had to do a project about future technology. One of the things we had to talk about was making the product green, as in environment friendly. Well, let's just say that one girl thought it meant literally making the project green. She was sufficiently embarrassed when she realized her mistake, and many laughs were had during their (her group's) presentation. 646 ...
srivats2 9y ago As a student in 5th grade, we were asked to write a short essay about peer pressure and how it has affected our own personal lives as an English assignment. Almost none of the kids knew what it was but one guy in particular wrote two pages about how a pear can apply enough pressure on a tree branch that they would fall to the ground. There was nothing remotely correct in the two pages, not physics nor the language or the interpretation. 256 ...
Dikaneisdi 9y ago Оо, thought of another one - my professor at uni told us about a time he assigned an essay on the male gaze in film. Got an essay back about 'the male gays in film'. + 4.8K ...
xtrakrispie 8y ago Not a teacher but a fellow student had to do a project about something European so he chose the Notre Dame Cathedral. Не ended up doing a project worth 2 test grades on the notre dame football team. Не got a zero. + 1.6K ...
ElBancoBlanco 9y ago Math Teacher. When I asked a student to Show his work for a math problem, he actually sent me an email with a picture.......... A picture of him writing the answer on a piece of paper. Smartass. + 1.1K ...
Dikaneisdi 9y ago e Told my students to write the essay question at the top of their page. Fully half the class wrote 'The Essay Question'. + 4.8K ...
Mongopwn 9y ago . Edited 9y ago I gave students a list of vocabulary words to look up and define for homework. Two of the words were atheist and polytheist. Well, I don't know where the miscommunication arose, but one student did not define either. Instead, they wrote, polyatheist. One who doesn't believe in many gods.
Blumpkin_Queen 9y ago . Edited 9y ago When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher told the class to write in complete sentences for our first homework assignment. I heard it as incomplete sentences. I purposefully made all my sentences fragments. The teacher was neither impressed nor did she believe me. 1.1K ...
Moffe1234 9y ago This one girl last year did an assignement on Hawaii, when the assignement was Iceland. She mixed up Island and Iceland, and thought she could choose any Island. 4.4K ...
 9y ago 9 Once the teacher asked us to do problems 1 to 10 for homework. One of my friends did problems 1, 2, and 10, thinking the teacher said one two ten instead of one to ten. + 1.3K ...
MZMD e 9y ago Preschool teacher here. Asked my students to tell me the first sound in dog, almost every one responded, woof. + 4.5K ...
 9y ago Edited 9y ago Gave grade 2/3 students an activity where they had to draw foods from every food group. When I went around checking, I noticed one student had some odd things in his sections for grains. I asked him what he drew and he told me lettuce and spinach. When I asked why he thought those were grains, his face went white and he said, You mean that doesn't say 'greens'? It was adorable. + 656 ...
lurkingterp 9y ago . In first grade, we were assigned to go home and answer a few questions on loose leaf. Not knowing exactly what that was, I wandered about the woods near my home searching for leaves big enough for my writing. My moms reaction when she asked why I was writing on leaves was priceless. + 3.2K ...
Wonderpuff . 9y ago Art class. Teacher wanted 12 thumbnail sketches (small rough idea of the picture) of our ideas for a painting. One girl drew her thumbnail 12 times. + 5K ...
SaavikSaid 9y ago This happened in my first (or second) grade class. We were given black construction paper and chalk, and told to make a skeleton on the paper with the chalk. One of the kids started having some difficulty with the task and the teacher - along with the rest of us - realized he was gluing chalk in the shape of a skeleton onto the paper, and had run out of chalk pieces. + 4.4K ...
giganto_portmanteau 9y ago Former Seattle high school science teacher here. I had one particular class which was very literal, and I was cracking down on homework being late. I said, this assignment is due on Wednesday, so to get full credit, email it to me before Thursday so that I can start grading it in time before we meet again. One student actually named Kevin asked what time it should be emailed so I said by midnight. Не said midnight would be Thursday (fair point), so I clarified 11:59pm would work. Another kid said he'd be in Arizona (another time
LostFlute 9y ago . As a teacher of a community college library course, I assigned a student the task of compiling a bibliography of books for high school students on the Middle Ages. Half of the bibliography contained books on mid-life crisis, empty-nesters and menopause. 966 ...
millethousand . 8y ago High school project: the topic was ethnic cleansing...she wrote about the importance of hygiene. + 181 ...
doctorhoohoo 8y ago . Edited 8y ago English teacher here. I once took a look as a student was writing a paper and saw that she was analyzing the great whore author Edgar Allan Poe. When I explained the difference between that and horror she looked like she wanted to die.
 8y ago e When i was in elementary school and learning essay formats for the first time, i thought double space meant two spaces between each word lol... teacher got mad at me when i turned in my paper thinking i did it as a joke when i genuinely didnt know. + 2.4K ...
Camehereavl 8y ago I had to give a mandatory state writing test to fourth graders. The prompt was related to our study of that state's native Americans, and focused somehow on ears of corn. I think they had to write a narrative from the perspective of a pre-colonial native American person. Apparently, this kid had never heard the expression 'ears of corn' so it morphed into this weird sci-fi story along the lines of The Fly where a kid's ears turn into corn cobs. Не ran out of time so I don't know how it would have resolved but toward
 8y ago . School psych. Saw a teacher give a worksheet to a kid with autism. The kid would not complete the worksheet in class because it said Homework at the top. The student was not at home. We crossed off the word home and handed it back, and all was good with the world. + 5.5K ...
 8y ago . Edited 8y ago I'm a math teacher. Had a set of questions that said Solve the equations or inequalities. Some kid wrote equation equation inequality etc for the answers.

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