If my mama wasn't completely insane . . .

Today's Zinger: "Mrs. Kratzer, if my mama wasn't completely insane, she'd be a lot like you." I've decided it's a compliment!

Today's Tip: Head on over to TeachersPayTeachers for the big Teacher Appreciation Day Sale!  Tuesday and Wednesday, shop for products that are up to 28% off.

TpT Booth at the NCMSA!

The North Carolina Middle School Association Conference begins on Monday, and our own Michele Luck is manning a booth with her fabulous husband, Steve. Thank you, Michele, for all the hard work!!! I live a few miles from the conference center and dropped by tonight to make two new friends.

Michele has organized materials to highlight the work of 17 TpT folks. Here's the booth!

Teachers can enter a drawing for a goodie basket.

Steve made these trees, and this one highlights ELA materials.

Pinterest Love

I have fallen in love . . . with Pinterest. I started following a few high school English teachers, and I invited them to join me on two collaborative boards. I'd like to invite my blog followers who teach on the high school level to join these boards as well. If you pin a priced item, please add the price to the beginning of the description.

High School English

AP English

One of my classes this semester is AP English Language and Composition, so I have been posting a lot for that course. I NEED MORE AP LIT STUFF!

Grabbing a Double-Edged Sword

The scribbled sticky notes all over my desk tell me I'm behind on blogging! Instead of a tip and a resource, today my followers get treat: lots of zingers, funny one-liners spoken or written by my students. These have not been edited! Enjoy.

Today's Zinger #1: I was talking with a student about an argumentative essay we were analyzing. Here's how the conversation went:
Teacher: That issue has another side.
Student: Yeah, it's a double-edged sword.
Teacher: Is there any part of the argument that you can grab onto?
Student: How can you grab onto a double-edged sword?

Zinger #2: "Mrs. Kratzer, what is the abbreviation for May?"

Zinger #3: (During a lesson on The Civil Rights Movement)
"Selma--wasn't that a movie where they drove off a cliff?"

Zinger #4: "Glitter is the herpes of art. Once you got it, you can't get rid of it."

Zinger #5: "Ima a jack you for your church shoes."

Zinger #6: "I read it somewhere, I don't know--maybe on that link to that online newspaper, the Huff and Puff."

Zinger #7: "I am mug-shot serious."

The Birds and the Bees

Today's Zinger: I actually overhead this conversation in my Creative Writing class today:

Male Student A: What are "the birds and the bees?"
Female Student B: You know, the sex talk.
Male Student A: My parents don't talk about that stuff. Will you tell me?
Female Student B: Uh, no.
Male Student A: C'mon, I wanna hear the story.
Female Student B: Why birds and bees anyway? That can't work out. Hey, baby, hold still (student is now thrusting her pelvis). Why birds and bees? They aren't even the same size.
ME: (Because I had to jump in) It's not birds with bees; it's birds with birds and bees with bees.
Female Student A: So, why don't they call it the "birds talk?"
Male Student B: Why do they use two animals anyway?
Female Student A: Well, they can't use a human and an animal.
Male Student B: That won't work anyway. Animals can't have sex with humans.
Female Student A: Yes they can!
Male Student B: Oh, yeah. Beastiology.

HUGE TpT Sale Monday and Tuesday

It doesn't get better than this on TpT! Get 20% off my products and an additional 10% off anything you buy on TpT Monday and Tuesday. Most sellers are offering 20% off as well. Go to my scrolling store on the right to start shopping.

Polynesia: A Place or a Sauce?

Today's Zinger: In a conversation with two students who are Baltimore Ravens fans, one of them pronounced Haloti Ngata's last name with a hard g. I said, "It's 'Nata;' the g is silent. He's Polynesian." The other student said, "Polynesia is a place? I thought it was just a sauce at Chik-fil-A!"

Today's Tip: I tried something new this week, and I thought it was worth sharing. My juniors wrote an essay analyzing Patrick Henry's "Speech to the Virginia Convention," and the results were less than stellar. The rubric (a generic one based on the AP English Language exam) is on a scale of 1 to 9. I told them to rewrite their essays based on my comments and aim for a score of 8. I met one-on-one with students after school yesterday and dealt with "biggest bang for the buck" strategies. The revisions I got today were remarkably improved!

Today's Resource: I discovered a website on Monday, and I was delighted by all the freebies. Check out all these graphic organizers!

The International Bachelorette Programme

Today's Zingers: I asked some teacher buddies to contribute to the blog today, and I got these responses from friends Christina and Lynn:

I was teaching Romeo and Juliet and a young man was trying to express that he was growing bored with the story, and he said to me, “This story is so monogamous.” I told him that technically, yes it was, but I thought he meant to say “monotonous” and then explained what the definitions of the two words were. The best part: He then argued that he was right and I was wrong. Ugh.

I had a personal essay in which the girl said she was in the International Bachelorette Programme.  I think Microsoft Word did a weird spellcheck!

Today's Tip: I tend to teach in small chunks, hover over them until students demonstrate proficiency, and then move on. Here's my tip: Instead of evaluating an entire draft, have an essay come to you in pieces. For example, if you have 30 students in a class, you can zip through 30 body paragraphs and give instant feedback. The next day, students revise that one paragraph and then plan and draft the next. You'll find that the second body paragraph that comes in will be a bit more refined than the first, and you may avoid marking the same issues over and over. This strategy is especially helpful with struggling students.

Today's Resource: YOU! In the Comments, give your best tip for dealing with the paper load in an English classroom.

The Kissing Chair

Today I tried out an activity created by Effie Cannon. I gave each student a piece of paper with several parts of speech listed vertically. I had half the students start at the bottom and the other half at the top, folding their papers after they had written the word required. We passed the papers around a circle and repeated the action until each sheet was filled. Students did not know what was on the paper they received. Students then unfurled their papers and found a complete (fairly nonsensical) sentence. They tweaked the verb tense to make it work and then wrote each sentence on the board. These are the sentences they created. WARNING: I HAVE NOT EDITED SEXUAL OR POLITICALLY INCORRECT CONTENT. THESE ARE THE ACTUAL SENTENCES STUDENTS CREATED BY ACCIDENT!

The blue rhino is kissing a very elaborate skyscraper.
The Asian girl is really limping the special window.
A butt-ugly teacher is unfortunately squishing a stupified house.
The ugly kangaroo was happily thrusting the stupendous apartment.
The indigo mother was thrustingly tackling the greasy Mexican boy.
The slow Asian girl had spiritually impaled the Negro water.
A pretty elephant seal was gently stroking a secret paper.
The kissing chair is stupendously attacking the red acne.
The ridiculous soccer mom was mostly trapezed on the spacious hibachi.
A dumb worker had hurriedly thrusted the green platypus poop.

Why try this exercise? My students found it to be a great parts of speech review although that wasn't my purpose. I wanted to make the point that writers DO NOT structure their sentences by accident, that we are VERY deliberate about the placement of words. I moved from this "game" to an analysis of syntax in a short passage.

They caught a case of heredity.

Today's Zinger: My Creative Writing/Biology combination class is working on a research paper on stem cells. One girl wrote in her draft, "For some people, diet and exercise were not enough to avoid cardiovascular disease. They caught a case of heredity." (By the way, this student has probably asked me ten times if I posted her funny sentence yet, so yes, I do get permission from the students before I post their funny lines.)

Today's Tip: Research indicates that you can get the most bang for your buck teaching writing at the sentence level with mini lessons on structure. Today as a bellringer review, my students pulled compound-complex sentences from their writing --or what they they thought were compound-complex sentences--and put them on the board. Each student had to go to a different sentence and mark the independent and dependent clauses and determine whether or not it was CD-CX. The kids got to move, evaluate, and socialize--the trifecta of teendom!

Today's Resource: I have two free resources for my teaching buddies today.

The first is a chart to help students analyze tonight's presidential debate.

Obama-Romney "Debate" Analysis Chart

The second is a handy PDF for making a Formative Flip, a quick assessment tool that can be used in ANY classroom.

Formative Flip