Where Do You Come Up With This?!

Since grading papers can sometimes be a very daunting task, occasionally I'll have the kids take a test, exchange papers and we'll go through it as they grade each others' papers.  Most of the kids love it, but some find it tedious and would rather that I do all the work. :) One of my boys complained that he didn't like it because whoever graded his paper the last time put HUGE check marks for correct answers, HUGE 'X's for wrong answers and drew a picture at the bottom. I don't understand why that is necessary for grading a paper, but apparently it was a more common concern than I thought, because other kids started piping up with the same news. Soooo, the next time we traded papers, I spent about 5 minutes going over appropriate etiquette for grading papers. I made sure to show them the correct size/location for a check mark, the correct size/location for an X, how to circle the correct answer, and reiterated that they should NOT draw anything anywhere on the paper. When I got the papers back, they looked MUCH better and cleaner... except for one paper. All over one girl's paper was written, "RUE THE DAY I TELL YOU!!" I'm sorry, have we gone back to the Shakespearean era? How come you don't know what our vocabulary words "anxious" or "leisure" mean, but you know the word "rue"?? And, since there is limited punctuation in your sentence, do you mean "Rue the day, I tell you." or "Rue the day I tell you."? Very different meanings. And who is this warning for?