The Clever Teacher

  Gerald is a very naughty boy in the class. He enjoys tricking everybody.

  One day, Gerald said loudly before class, ’The teacher is a real fool!’ Everybody laughed.

  The teacher was walking into the classroom at that moment. But he pretended not to hear this. He said nothing. He walked to the teacher’s desk and began the class. He said, ‘Today, we are going to learn about punctuation.’

  He picked up a piece of chalk and wrote a sentence on the blackboard:

  Gerald says the teacher is a real fool.

  The whole class laughed. The teacher said peacefully, ‘With two commas, I could change the meaning of this sentence completely.’ He put two commas in the sentence. Now, the sentence read:

  Gerald, says the teacher, is a real fool.

Dividing the Nuts

  Charles and Beverley are good friends. One day, they collected nuts in the woods. After they gathered the nuts, they wanted to share them. They decided to do this in a cemetery. But as they walked past the cemetery gate, they dropped two nuts.

 ‘We’ll pick them up later,’ Charles said and they left the two nuts there ……

  A few minutes later, a little girl walked past the cemetery. She heard voices,’ One for you and one for me, one for you and one for me…’ She was very scared. She went for a policeman and said, ‘Listen! There are two ghosts there! And they are dividing the dead bodies!’

  Both the policeman and the little girl listened carefully……

‘One for you and one for me, and don’t forget those two at the gate!’

              广东实验中学   初一（1）班   钟琬婷（改编）