"Mrs. P, What's Adultery?"

So, it's "TEST TIME" in NYS. Ugh. This has become the place I've NEVER wanted to be and always swore I would NEVER be - "teaching to the test."  Why and how that has happened is food for thought for another day (and involves lots of stupid acronyms like APPR, SLO's, etc.)  I have 4 days of school this week, then Friday and all next week off for Easter/Spring vacation. Then, we go back to school on Monday, April 16th, and WHAM .......Tues through Thurs that week STATE TESTING begins. Whoo hoo. Not. Yeah, the kids will do fantastically well after a 10 day break.  Not.  So, on Friday, in an almost-last-ditch effort to cover a few mundane topics that we haven't yet, I had planned to teach, OVERTLY, the skill of "inferencing."  I had this great little worksheet that would help us out all printed out, pulled from a teaching website I use frequently. Apparently, in my old, grey-haired years, I forgot RULE #1 of teaching 101 - "Never give the students ANYTHING you have not read thoroughly yourself."  (That goes, hand in hand, by the way, with "NEVER SHOW A MOVIE, or READ A BOOK WITH A CLASS that you haven't seen or read AHEAD of time!!!")  So, I photocopy 60 copies of this nifty little worksheet on Inferencing.   Take it to my 6th grade class across the hall. LUCKILY, someone up there is looking out for me......   instead of handing it out, directly, and going through it, as I had planned, I had to wait for that teacher to do a small mini-lesson herself on how to inference. As I was waiting, I happened to glance through the 4 examples listed on my worksheet, since I hadn't, you know, actually READ it all ahead of time. OMG!!!  I got to the 4th example and almost passed out - THIS, BELOW, is what I was about to give my 11 year olds to read and discuss: 

Ruby sat on the bed she shared with her husband holding a hairclip.  There was something mysterious and powerful about the cheaply manufactured neon clip that she was fondling in her newly suspicious palms.  She didn’t recognize the hairclip.  It was too big to be their daughter’s, and Ruby was sure that it wasn’t hers.  She hadn’t had friends over in weeks but here was this hairclip, little and green with a few long black hair strands caught in it.  Ruby ran her fingers through her own blonde hair.  She had just been vacuuming when she noticed this small, bright green object under the bed.  Now their life would never be the same.  She would wait here until Mike returned home.

8.  Why is Ruby so affected by the hairclip? _______________________________________________

What in the text supports your idea?

9.  How has the hairclip affected Ruby’s relationship? _______________________________________

Oh yeah, hell yeah, I TOTALLY want to teach my 10 and 11 year olds about ADULTERY. WTH??? Why was this even ON a teacher website?  Thank you GOD for that 10 minute pass that allowed me to change my plans MIDSTREAM. Hey, I'm a teacher. I'm nothing, if not totally flexible!!!