How kind of my students to provide me with fodder.

The question on the assignment: "write the fraction 4/9 with a denominator of 45." The student had pondered this but was totally, completely confused by the language.

Sue's Thing To Do When YOu're Stuck: Write down what you know. So. I told the student that was sometimes the secret of life. So she did. She wrote down "4/9," and I said, "and what else do you know? WShat's a denominator?" So she wrote a fraction with nothing on top and a 45 on the bottom... then put an equals sign between them and solved the problem.

Sometimes you don't know how much you know.