Sometimes a "Fail" Can Be a "Find"

This year I subscribed my students to Scholastic Scope Magazine, a language arts publication designed specifically for middle school students that contains thrilling articles that my kids love to read. Some of their favorites?

This article about Facebook:

This Justin Bieber/Beatles compare and contrast activity:

And this awesome writing mechanics review cleverly disguised as an article chronicling the life of the famous competitive eater, Takeru Kobayashi...

When I got the latest issue, I was thrilled to find that they had made some reading comprehension quizzes with interactive PDFs, ones that could be edited and emailed directly to me. This was such a cool find since it jived so well with, ya know, the whole paperless concept. After reading this narrative nonfiction piece about one of the world's deadliest creatures, we embarked upon our new paperless adventure (shocking.), the interactive quiz.

Link sent to all students? Check.
Link retrieved by all? Check.
Bubbles marked? Check.
Short answers answered? Check.
Quizzes "Saved as..." and email sent? Fail..

If you don't already know, middle schoolers are pretty adept at fishing out a teacher's failed preparation, and my students are no exception. They quickly realized that whenever they "Saved as..." in order to make a copy of their completed quiz, they lost all of their answers.

I chalked it up to my not reading the directions carefully enough, apologized profusely, and told them to not worry about the quiz. (Contrary to popular perception, they were incredibly gracious.)

So, I do my duty to go back and double check my instructions, but find that nothing was wrong with them. Then I contacted the fine people at Scope asking for help. Not an hour after my email, someone wrote and said that my class had found a major glitch in their interactive quiz system! Not only did they thank us, but the editor of the magazine wrote a personal "thank you" and will be sending a gift to each of my students as a thanks for helping them fix their system.

This "Fail." was definitely a "Find".

Go team!