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