Not Quite the Pithy Retort

The 9th graders (same group as yesterday) had a test on the story today. My instructions were to read through the test with them. I got to the last two questions which were vocabulary questions. "Write a sentence using retort correctly."

"What does retort mean?"

Yeah, like I've never heard that one before (although, it's usually during spelling tests). I ignored the question.

Another student asked me again. So, I had to explain that I was ignoring the question. That was the point of the question. Sigh.

Perhaps I should have answered. Because clearly, many of them did not know what retort means. I have examples:

• My mom retort to the living room to clean.
• I was watching a movie and they keep saying retorted words to each other.
• I retorted as fast as I can from a dog that was chasing me.
• Her retort broke yesterday.
• She moved to the next seat and determined the retort of the game.

There's more. Rather than clutter this post with them all, I'll tweet them later (@ZiziRho). The other word they had to put in a sentence was benevolently. Apparently, some of them thought this was a description of a smell.  

Once all the tests were turned in, I asked if anyone could define the words. Depending on the class, I either got a good answer or I had to provide the answer. At least some of them had actually studied and knew the material.