Bring Us a Shrubbery

I taught my 7th graders personification a little bit ago by making them come up with a list of nouns that are objects, a list of verbs that only people can do, and then combining them into 15 sentences.
My favorite sentence was:
My mother's bush sings in the wind. (I bet it does Josh. I bet it does.)

I was teaching my 9th graders personification using the same lesson. We were making our long list of nouns on the board and a student yelled out "shrub" and then another student yelled out "bush." I immediately snickered out loud thinking of the 7th grader's Mom's bush. A student in the front asked what I was laughing about, and I decided to test my class to see if they would find the humor in the 7th grader's sentence. I told them the story about a 7th grader that wrote, "My mom's bush sings in the wind," and waited to see their response. Half of the class got it right away and cracked up. The other half of the class obviously didn't get the joke and were laughing that nervous half-laughter of naive kids who want to be included. I watched as one of my slower girls leaned over to another student and asked, " Was it a rose bush or something?"

Priceless.