Kids correct tweets from NFL Players

NFL players may have the advantage in size and speed, but when it comes to grammar and spelling, some of them take a backseat to second-graders.

A class at Elmwood Franklin School in Buffalo proved this last week by easily executing an assignment from their teacher Mark Saldanha, correcting the spelling and grammar mistakes in tweets by a trio of NFL players. The corrected tweets were put on big pieces of paper, photographed and posted on the school’s Facebook page.

While many Facebook commenters supported the assignment as a creative way to demonstrate the real-life importance of grammar, others were less supportive. Wrote one commenter, “Wow! Cyberbulling 101. Their teacher taught them how to call someone out on the Internet and try to embarrass them. He or she is self-righteous and petty…”.

Saldanha, 36, who has been teaching at Elmwood for three years, inspected other Twitter accounts of NFL players to find more mistakes and then distributed them to the students. The class fixed Culliver’s tweet of “I pray to God I’m never dieing broke” with the correct spelling of “dying.’’ They changed Welker’s “Merry Christmas to everyone. My God bless you all!’’ to “May God bless you all.’’ Then they tackled the whole range of mistakes in Young’s “It’s true I could be alot better, But wit the football.’’

“About 90 percent of the kids found all the mistakes,’’ Saldanha said: “I’m very proud that they can spell better than some NFL players’’.