Can Your Students Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?

 Originally published 4/7/22, but certainly worth the reprint:

This activity is not mine, but rather came from the big, juicy, delicious braaaiiiinnnnnssssss of Rob Bowman & Molly Fleming Schauer.  To my knowledge, it is an activity they willingly shared.  The person I got it from got it from another person. I could not find it on Teacher-Pay-Teachers either.  If you know these individuals or know that they sell this activity, let me know, please, so I can take it down.

I did modify it slightly to fit my classroom needs.

The idea is to get your students to write a paragraph on how to survive the zombie apocalypse.  The student is able to take one person they know with them, two objects from their house, and declare a destination where they are headed to survive.  The students must explain why that person will help them survive and what is it about those two objects that will help them survive.  The location also needs to be thought out and explained how it will help the student survive longer than their classmates.

At this point, the students should then get into groups of three or so and decide which paragraph has the best chance of survival.  Give that student some prize.  The group will then clean up the paragraph, fix the grammar errors, and fix the holes in the survival plan.  Each group will then either present their paragraph to you, the class, or some crack panel of judges you assembled from asking other teachers or admin staff (it's a good lesson to do while being observed and make the ap a part of the judge crew).

I have two versions of it.  The first is closest to the original and is designed for AP Lang (fun practice in arguing a point).

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1am4nBKgphcPRANKaMIZMRyDEIluV_IQm2wSDk6KoUQc/edit#slide=id.ge7646c84f0_1_2

The second link is for a regular ed class.  You can use either one for an honors class.  The regular ed one just extends the time allowed to compose the paragraph and gives more guidance to the number of sentences needed for each section.  I know there are differing opinions on guided writing, so if you don't like it, remove that text box.  Personally, my students need the extra guidance.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16pLWKH4M8svcogSUyqZ6FspYs8Kx44SgWVuNmfSo_dY/edit#slide=id.ge7646c84f0_1_2  

This is great to help students understand giving supporting details.  The genius of it is that it will work on almost all age groups.  The original was designed for AP Language and Composition.  However, I mention the idea to my 6th grade daughter (who is not into zombies in the slightest) and she got excited about figuring out who and what she would take.  The she started texting her friends who all got into and tried to be the one who came up with a better solution.  I somehow became the judge when they couldn't decide if something was "doable" or not.  These sixth graders were spending their time thinking out the situation and supporting their assertions like champs.  I may be a bit biased, but I do think my daughter came up with the best location - a high school. Her thought - easy to block off hallways to prevent zombies from getting in, plenty of room, food supplies in the cafeteria, and medical supplies already in the nurse's office.

I can't wait to try it out on my seniors.

There Art Thou Happy

One of my least favorite Shakespeare plays is Romeo and Juliet.  The last year that I taught the play I swore that the next time I did, I was going to start in Act V with Romeo stepping over Paris's body and reaching for the poison.

However, a former colleague of mine had a killer lesson idea for Act III scene iii.  Romeo is whining about how awful his life is and the Friar, speaking for us, I guess, has had enough of it.  He lists off a few things that Romeo should be grateful for and ends with this line:

A pack of blessings lights upon thy back: Happiness courts thee in her best array; but, like a misbehav'd and sullen wench, thou pout'st upon they fortune and thy love.  Take heed, for such die miserable.

 Not wanting her students to "die miserable", she has them as a homework assignment, list out their "pack of blessings".  Puts a bit of a positive spin to her class.

Teaching AP Lit (or Honors English): Literary Lenses

This lesson was designed for an AP Lit class, though I think there would be room for it in an honors class also.  I'll walk you through the process to recreate what I did and if you are short on time, I'll give you a link to where I put my final lesson on TPT.

One of the things I wanted to do while teaching AP Lit was to teach different literary lenses (or literary criticisms as they called it when I was in college).  I thought how hard could this be?

Turns out, not as easy as I wanted it to be.  Well, it's not that the information wasn't out there - it was.  It just wasn't already set up in the way I wanted it to be.  What I wanted was to have my students read "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and then use the different criticisms to break it apart.  I vaguely remember a lesson like that in college - it was my first exposure to the different criticisms.  Unfortunately, I did not see anything like that.

So I set out on my own to research the various criticisms (It has been decades since I was in college and I typically taught lower level students, so had no need to explain Post Modernism).  I had hung on to that college textbook for decades, but had thrown it out in the past couple of years (of course).  I began researching, hoping that I could find references to my poem of choice, but found only a little directly related to "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".

So I finally figured I would just do what I would have done in any of those college lit courses thirty years ago and do my own interpretation of the poem using each lens.

I write this poem on the white board with wet erase markers and annotate in class with dry erase so that I can wipe the annotations off while leaving the poem (that blows their minds).  It was also a major factor in me deciding to try this all in two days, rather than potentially spacing it out once a week until done.  I like the two days crash course, but I see value in the once a week method as well.

I decided to start with Reader Response Theory, which is not that valuable as a lens for an actual FRQ, but essential as a starting point for these students to understand what they bring to a text.  Plus I get to draw this amazing picture on my board which makes students wonder why I didn't become an art teacher:

If you are not familiar with the three book theory, in short it goes that Book 1 (or Text 1) is what the author envisioned writing.  Due to changing thoughts, edits, etc., what is produced is Book 2, which is often quite different in many ways from what the author had in mind.  That is the text we all read, but what is important to Reader Response Theory is that all of use have Book 3 in our heads - how we interpret Book 2 due to past life experiences, memories, connections made to other books, distractions around us while reading, prior knowledge, and a whole host of other factors that make our experience with the text unique to us. 

I use this image for all levels of classes - it is great to get them to understand that their experience with the book has merit too.  Once we get them all talking about their memories and feelings with this poem, I explain the significance of that third book which will be so important in our discussions, but can only be discussed by them.  

At this point I take a break to discuss how all the lenses we are about to learn are specific disciplines, but much like how Ultimate Fighting Championship morphed from specific fighting style vs specific fighting style into Mixed Martial Arts, we too are able to merge them together to get the most out of our analysis.

Now for the meat of the lesson - I researched all of the following criticisms:

• Biographical
• Formalism/The New Criticism (I know that these are two distinct criticisms, but they are similar enough for us to merge for an introductory lesson)
• Myth Criticism (my favorite)
• Marxist Theory
• Existentialism
• Post Modernism / Post Structuralism / Deconstruction (again, three different takes, but as they are often paired with each other by scholars, it makes sense to pair them here)
• Freudianism / Psychoanalytic (two terms for the same lens) 
• Feminist Theory
• Queer Theory
• Critical Race Theory 

For each one of these I briefly go over what that lens seeks to accomplish and then we break down the poem looking at it through that lens.   When we are done we have discovered that this poem either means anywhere from a man riding through the woods at night to a man having an adulterous affair to the problems with a social media culture and many more in between! 

I need another picture to break up the text, so here is a page form my notes:

Well, the picture is a block of text, so I don't think it really does what I want it to do.  :)

So why teach this?  

1. It's fun.  
2. This is a college level course and this is what they teach in college literature courses (well, at least they did in the early '90s when I was there - I assume they still do).
3. Once students realize how many different takes there can be in literature, they are less likely to succumb to the imposter syndrome that tells them they don't know enough to put out the "right" answer.  There are many right answers! I want to revel in all of them.

If you follow this path, I promise that you will not be disappointed.  You probably are closer to your college days than I am and have these readily available in your notes already, but if you do not, I do have it up on TPT should you just want to take my notes and play it out in your class. You can find it here:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/XET-Literary-Lenses-Criticisms-Theories-Using-Stopping-by-Woods-14242490

I also bundled this with the Archetypes lesson because they pair so well together.  I always use them back to back and follow up with "Hills Like White Elephants".  You can get the bundle pack here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/XET-Bundle-Literary-Lenses-Archetypes-14250564 

Shameless Plug: Literature and Lairs - Character Analysis

Character Analysis D&D style!

 

The idea came to me when printing off some character sheets for my daughter's D&D group - this is the perfect platform for dissecting character!  So I started tweaking and realized that while the idea is sound, just modifying the existing D&D character sheet is not going to work for my purposes.  So I started just making one from scratch.  Here are a few partial screen shots - I think it came out pretty good!

So the whole thing is a page front and back, along with a detailed walk-through student instruction sheet.  I plan on having my students roll the die to get the attributes and then finding a character that matches closely (allowing for some tweaks here and there).  I made this for my AP Lit students, but the first practice run-through was on a group of middle schoolers at a Pre-College camp - they loved it!  My objective was to create a platform for character analysis, but the middle schoolers used it to create detailed characters for a creative writing campaign, so I was happy to see that it is quite versatile!

It took way longer to get this sized and laid out than I thought it would take when I first embarked on this idea, but in the end, I think it will become a mainstay in my classes.

Get it here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/XET-Literature-Lairs-Character-Analysis-11913326?st=fb14def15bd606f53d6adaa1318e8e4c 

If you try it out, I would love to hear from you.  Drop a comment here or on the TPT site.  Every bit helps!

Finding Specific Textual Examples Using 3-2-2

A few weeks ago, I dreamed up a lesson.  My teacher neighbor said if I am lesson planning in my sleep, I have a problem, and she may be right.  I do this not enough to be often, but enough not to be rare.  Usually when I wake I realize that the lesson actually stinks, but this one might have some merit to it.  I'll find out today during second period!

The lesson is called 3-2-2.  I don't know why.  It was what it was called in my dream.

I'm trying this out with my AP Lit class with The Lord of the Flies, but it could be used with honors or modified for regular.

First, I give the students four blank index cards.  Then I give them a card with a blue prompt.  They will then go and find a specific text example or a quote that illustrates that point then write that on one of their blank cards - but only the quote/example and page number - no rationale for why it was picked.  If they have time, they should try and do two card for the prompt.

I collect those and we do it again with the green prompts.

I collect those as well and then I hand them the red prompt cards.  These cards are more involved and require analysis.  I will allow them to do a blind trade (I will trade for ANY other card to get rid of this one) and then I will allow them to do a trade between them until they either are stuck with the card they have or have managed to find themselves a card they want.  

Since I have chosen https://app.myshortanswer.com/ to be where they write these, I will have them join the activity and type their question into the answer box.

While they are doing this, I will be laying out all of their examples.  Once everyone has had enough time to record their question, they will only use examples that have already been found.  The examples will be first come, first serve and they will need to use two examples to explain their point.  It might turn out that they find the perfect examples.  It may be that they will need to use a bit a creativity to bend these examples to their will.  Either way, they will write their answer using their two examples to prove their point into My Short Answer and we will run the Battle Royale sequence to determine which writers did it best.

Time - It took me about an hour to write out all the cards and I plan on this taking the majority of our class period (which runs an hour and a half).  No grading time needed since I am using My Short Answer for students to evaluate instead of me.

This is practicing analytical thinking, creativity, and serves as a nice review of important details for the first ten chapters.  Hopefully it will work.  Tomorrow we do Who's to Blame, which I know always works.  Let me know if you have ideas on how to improve this activity or if you try it in your classroom!

Also of interest - The Lord of the Flies Survival Game.

Freebie: Poetry with Odd Man Out

I was looking through my notebook where I scrabble out ideas so I won't forget them and I discovered two things of interest.

The first was the words UNSEEN POEM written at the top of the page, but there was nothing else on the entire page, so I guess that poem will remain unseen.  :)   I have no idea why I wrote that in my notebook.  I am sure it was a genius idea that, alas, is gone forever.

The second was this idea for Odd Man Out.  Full disclosure, I don't remember if I thought this up and wrote it down or if I heard the idea from somewhere and wrote it down.  So here is the activity - give the students four poems with three of them being from the same author and one from a different author.  Let them get into groups and analyze the poems and see if they can figure out which poem was written by a different poet.    I figure I will start with this gem from the past:

Then I will give the group the first page of this handout: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bOSbo7rGxUW7bWnbBzATffoHzAQTN8SPcRnuxr_LSKo/edit?tab=t.0

The first page has three poems from Cavalier poet Sir John Suckling and the poem in the bottom right hand corner is from Cavalier poet Thomas Carew.

I can do it again later or int he same day with the second page which has three sonnets by Elizabeth Barret Browning and one from Christina Rossetti (the one in the upper right hand corner).

Feel free to borrow the handout and try it in your own class.  Even if the kids are wrong, the practice at analyzing the poems will be worth it.

Indoctrinate Your Students! (With Brave New World and 1984 Propaganda)

 I like to make my classroom as literary immersive as possible.  When we read Brave New World, the seating chart changes by height.  My tall row are my Alphas, and so on down to Epsilons (though I make sure my Epsilon row can handle the joke).  I always praise whatever answer my Alphas give (even I have to do crazy maneuvering to bring them to the actual correct answer and I cut the corners off the papers handed out the Epsilons (so they don't hurt themselves, of course)).  When we read 1984, we paper the school with Big Brother Is Watching You posters and we have a secret police in the class to report on other students who aren't loving Big Brother as often as they want to (punishment, wipe down the desks or turn in other classmates).  

All the while this is going on, I have a slideshow of propaganda constantly flashing on the TV screen.  I'll share them with you. Some of the slides I created and some I just found online (more online for 1984 than Brave New World).  In order to play it automatically, I put the tab in its own window, hit SLIDESHOW and then in the bottom left corner, select AUTOPLAY then LOOP then 30 SECS then PLAY.  I cast it to the TV and go about my day.  

Here is the Brave New World one: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1c1Xd0Z0VF9w6BVA71WJsnyRBiO5aqnwQEbiSQ4_mIr0/edit#slide=id.g7f9262ee2f_0_26269

 Here is the 1984 one: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2196350756928860595/1634928911302079891

I haven't taught 1984 in a few years, so it could probably stand to be updated a bit.

What about you?  Do you have any cool immersive activities?  Leave a comment!

Who's to Blame? - A Great Class Discussion Lesson

This is my second year doing this and I think I have honed it down to a good 45 minutes to hour-long discussion lesson. 

I got the idea/inspiration from a podcast titled Alarmist.  The format of the show is to pick an event in history, say the sinking of the Titanic, the assassination of JFK, the Donner Party, the Superbowl XXXVIII halftime controversy, and many others like it.  They discuss the event and then start listing (well, they say they are listing it on a board - I'm just an audio listener so I will take them at their word) all the people and traditions and beliefs and anything else that is a factor.  The patriarchy is a common one that makes its way on their list.  Once their board is full, they start eliminating or combining until they have three.  One gets a warning, one gets a slap on the wrist, and the other goes to Alarmist jail.

So I began thinking - this would be awesome to use in a classroom discussion.  So I tried it out last year with my AP kids on who is to blame for Myrtle's death in The Great Gatsby.  It worked ok, but not with the flair I wanted.  I feel that maybe squashed some of the discussion by wanting to list everything first and then talk about it.  This year I did things a little differently. For one, I didn't read Gatsby this year, so I chose The Lord of the Flies.  Our mission was to decide who was to blame for Piggy's death.

It started with this:

The students were given some time to discuss and think about all the contributing factors.  Once I felt they were ready for the challenge, we started taking suspects.  This time, I let each suspect be defended or argued before we moved to a new subject.  That was the key to success.  After a LONG discussion of students getting very heated (but in a good way), the board was packed.  At that point, we marked out some suspects (Isaac Newton was argued for discovering gravity, but we released him from being a person of interest), we combined some suspects into others (Piggy's Auntie and parents were combined and then moved under the umbrella of Piggy), until we finally narrowed it down to our three main contenders: Roger, Human Nature, and Piggy.  

I did it again with the next class and they had the warning going to Roger, the slap on the wrist going to Piggy, and Jack going to AP jail.

This format could be used with almost any book.  Who's to blame for Macbeth's violent run?  Heathcliff's atrocities?  the hanging of Justine Moritz? the suicide of John the Savage?  You get the point!  And the amount of prep work for you is low - assuming you did your job earlier to get your kids ready for deep thinking.  Since there is a huge argument component, this works for AP Lang just as well.

It was so much fun!  They really reached deep and even the silly suspects (the color red, for instance) were vehemently fought for by their arresting officers.  How this would work in a lower level class, I am not sure.  I can only vouch for this in an AP class setting.  Try it and let me know how it worked in your class! 

Using Shirley Jackson to Teach Author's Technique

 The following lesson takes a 90 minute class to teach depending on the discussion you and your kids put forth.  You can, of course, break it up as you see fit.

We started the class by reading Shirley Jackson's "Charles".  If you've never read it, you find a copy here. It's a good break from the stories involving tragedy or death.  I like to have the kids read it in parts (narrator 1, narrator 2, Laurie, Mother, Father, Teacher) since we typically do a lot of individual reading activities. 

The story itself is short and fun and is a good way to teach situational irony and foreshadowing.  After we discuss these terms and we look at the clues we were given that give away the surprise ending (this is a good chance for those who figured it early to look smart by pointing out what it was that led them to see the truth).  At this point, many of the students are wandering how they missed it on the first reading. That's when we tackle how Jackson pulls this off - with narration. 

The mother is out narrator here and her view of her son contradicts elements in the story, but, being a mom, she gladly puts the blinders on and sees the best of her child and quickly dismisses any character flaws as being the result of this Charles kid.  Since she so willingly buys into it and since we have no reason to believe she is an unreliable narrator (and even more so since she does not believe herself to be one), we easily buy into her worldview.  Since she believes her child whole heartedly, we are forgiven if we miss that this kids is an intentionally unreliable narrator when retelling the events of each day to his parents.  Sure we have situational irony and foreshadowing, by the master writer here uses narration to deliver both of these in this story.

Now that they have an appreciation for Jackson, we jump in on her more famous work - "The Lottery".  At this point the students have some knowledge of our author, so may be looking for the ironic twist and try to figure it out.  I give them no warning about the story (other than it is a story that could have gotten me fired on my first year of teaching, but that is a story for a different blog post perhaps).  Since I want to do all of this in a day, I go with the old movie version (takes about 18 minutes):

The first round of discussion goes to what the point of the story is and it is rare that we get a student who off the bat realizes that this is about questioning why we do things.  If you want to hint to your students to help them find the answer, it lies in anything Old Man Warner (my hero) says.  After there has been some discussion on that front, we talk about the background here.  It was written in 1948, so people were not as open to change then as we are now.  That started with the '60s and progressed with the changing technology, but even now students can relate to groups that do not wish to let go of traditions they hold dear.  We talk about all the negative letters it got after being printed in the New Yorker and some of the disturbing reactions (people wanting to know where this took place so that they could go watch it).  

Once that is out of the way, we go for how she did it.  What technique is present here.  The answer, for me at least, is tone.  The first half of this movie has a lighthearted tone.  everyone is joking and catching up, the kids are playing, no worries in the world.  Once Old Man Warner speaks (my hero!), the tone gets more serious and increasingly gets more serious making any joke or light hearted statement seem more and more out of place. Even though we were looking for the ironic twist, we are so thrown off by this shift in tone that it amplifies the results.

After this discussion, we move to a book she is known for - The Haunting of Hill House.  Since this is a one day lesson, we don't have time to jump into the novel, but I do reel them in with this clip from the Netflix series by the same name (I know the two are very different in may ways, but the series does try to bring in the psychological horror like the book does - the ghosts react to the personal trauma the people bring to the house).  It's not too scary and no jump scares.

By the way, earlier in this episode, the boy found a hat in the house and brought it to his room, which you can see in this clip in the shadows.

Now that the students are looking for how the scene is developed, I usually have someone point out that the tension in this scene is the pacing.  The scene moves so slow and it is this that really drives the students to hold their breath like the boy in the clip.

It is almost time for the bell to ring, so we wrap it up by reminding how narration impacts the story in "Charles", tone impacts the story in "The Lottery", and pacing impacts the story in The Haunting of Hill House and they are given a challenge to start looking at how the authors achieve their greatness, not just what is the greatness achieved.

Using "Ordeal by Cheque" to Teach Inference

 Getting students to read between the lines is a bear.  For lower level readers, it is something they have not done before, most likely, yet it is typically heavy on state reading comprehension tests.  For AP level students, it is often something they can do, but do not feel comfortable relying on it for their analysis.

"Ordeal by Cheque" by Wuther Crue is the perfect story for this.  If you have never read it before, do so now.  I'll wait.  You can see a copy here.

With struggling readers, I put this up on the projector or tape large printouts on the white board as well as give them a copy to look at on their own.  Then we start looking at each check and focusing on the small details.  I am always asking what they think is going on.  Any thought is entertained regardless of how outlandish it may be.  We also entertain other students pointing out reason why an idea contradicts something in our text.  When we finally finish, I let them know that all that thinking they were doing about what could be happening in the story is inferring.  From that point forward, the word 'inference' is no longer as scary as it is when they only see it on state test practice.

With AP Lit students, I put them into groups and I only give them one page at a time.  I have printed each check as big as I can and I have them taped to the white board.  Students are in groups of 3 or 4 and start trying to figure out what the "real" story is here.  I ask them to annotate the story on the board by marking down what ideas they feel are important, details they notice, and questions they have.  Some will look up the amounts of money and figure out how much it is in today's dollars.  They always get excited when the first check to Tony Spagoni is revealed.  Again, we focus on what is happening outside of the checks.  In the end the take away is that all of these thoughts that they have is where good writers like to lay their story.  The text is great, but what happens between paragraphs and off screen (so to speak) is just as rich.

I have noticed that when I use this with standard classes, they are fine to stick with their class-created interpretation.  The AP kids, however, have thought of so many ways to interpret the events that they want to know what the "real" story is.  When I let them know that this is all of the story they get, they are frustrated (but not in a negative way).  The first year I did this and saw how amusing it was that they felt that there was not enough closure, I asked them if they had ever read "The Lady or the Tiger".  I was shocked to find out that they had not, so for fun, a few days later I gave them the story to pick apart, but kept the final paragraph off of their copy and sealed in an enveloped pinned to the wall.  The board was labeled LADY and TIGER and they had to provide their evidence for which one they thought was behind the door.  They scoured the story and when we only had a few minutes left in class, I read the final paragraph to them.  Let's just say I was lucky the bell rang to release class!  :)

A Different Type of Reading Check - Using Spark Notes to Check Reading

 Checking for reading is always tricky.  You want to reward those who read and at the same time, you don't want to punish the kid who struggles to remember what they read.  My typical fall back for lower level classes is the open note quiz.  That way they can use their notes (if they bothered to take any) to help them recall what they read.

However, I saw the other day on a Facebook group someone sharing an alternative that they like to use that I found quite clever.  The teacher's name is Katie Jo and this is all her idea, not mine, though I wish it was!

The Spark Note Check

Give the students a copy of the Spark Notes summary of the chapters that were assigned.  Ask students to fill in a detail or two (or I guess however many you wish to assign) that the summary missed.  She says that she changes up the summary source so that students don't just use Cliff Notes or something else to get around the Spark Notes short comings.  She also said that the only downfall she's encountered is that it takes longer to grade than a traditional quiz.

I love it and can't wait to try it.  If you have an alternative way to check for reading, please post in the comments!

Hills Like White Elephants

 I just finished this with my AP Lit class, but I have had a lot of fun with this story and this exercise with honors and regular level classes as well.

If you are not familiar with the story, you are welcome to read my file on it here.  It is slightly altered, but only in formatting to make it easier for the students to read.  I broke up the dialogue into separate paragraphs. It is also color coded by speaker.

A day or two (or more) before we read the story, I have already gone over my archetype notes with them.  I feel that archetypes are often easy gateways into breaking down meaning in poems or stories.  However, I have done this successfully without the notes and either way, before we read the story, I give them no heads up that this is going to be an archetype/symbolism lesson.

In fact, the only thing I tell them beforehand is that Hemmingway was known for writing on a fourth grade reading level, so this shouldn't be a strain on them (this is because I am a mean teacher).

Then we read the story and I ask them what is is about.  Only once has someone guessed the true nature of the "operation".  I entertain all possibilities (even the correct one should someone guess it) and then say, "Well, let's see if the setting can help us out."

Students are instructed to go through and find any details about what this place looks like.  There are some potentially conflicting details on tree placement, but we just make a judgement call and go with it.  I have students tell me what they see.  Each time we get a slightly different image, but the gist of it always looks like this:

But at this point, just the image, not the words.

I will acknowledge what you are all thinking right now.  I could have been an art teacher.  I do agree my skills are quite above par.

Once we have the setting, I ask them if this changes anything.  Of course, it doesn't, so it is time to reveal the wonders of symbolism.  We break it down usually from top to bottom (but waiting on the hills for last):

Sun - truth, life, goodness

Shade - lies, death, evil

Trees - happiness, life, paradise

Ebro River - time passing, life changing

Grain - happiness, life, paradise

But the grain is dry - sadness, hopelessness, death

Warm Breeze - warning, inspiration

Train Tracks - major life decision

So we understand now that this is a decision that deals with life and death, but the girl can choose one way or the other, so, maybe not her life or death.

Usually someone picks up on this being a choice about an abortion.  That opens discussion about a great many things - his attitude, her attitude, etc.

Finally we will reveal that a 'white elephant' refers to a story (maybe factual) of a Chinese emperor that would gift a white elephant to nobles that caused him problems.  Social expectations require that the noble take care of the gift; however, care for an elephant is too expensive and would often ruin the troublesome courtier.  So today, a 'white elephant' means something unwanted.  The White Elephant Christmas game is played after the holiday by people taking gifts that they do not want and wrapping them back up for the game.

If students have not gotten the abortion aspect, they will now.  

The only thing that remains at this point is one student will raise the question of why they are drinking so much alcohol if she is pregnant.  The story was written in 1927.  People didn't understand fetal alcohol syndrome until 1973.

AP Literature Hell

Today, my students went to hell.  Literarily speaking, of course!  

I wish I could say that this was my idea, but I just took the concept and ran with it.

This lesson is to help us review for the AP Literature exam, but could be adapted for other purposes.  All my students knew was that the calendar said "AP Hell" for today's lesson, and for some odd reason, they feared the worst.  :)

I decorated our door for the right inspiration.

Yeah, I need to work on those flames!  They look too much like hand- cut-out turkeys!  Then, of course, the right ambiance with both a fog machine (complete with red light) and sounds of hell coming from the tv.

Pro-tip - put the video into a Google Slides presentation set to run automatically when that slide is put up.  That way you don't have the ads interfering with your video.

The funny this is every student who was not in my class were ohhing and ahhing over the fog coming out of the room.  My students, expecting the worst, sighed and walked in waiting for some insane AP multiple choice practice!

Then I gave them this handout that has all the levels of Dante's Inferno on it.  I told them to write down all the characters they could remember from what we read in class - no matter how minor the character may seem.

After giving them some time, the fun began.  First I started by telling them the story of Dante being trapped in the Woods of Error and the three beasts and Beatrice and Virgil and all that good stuff!  Then I told them about the Vestibule with it's awful punishment.  That's where they jumped in.  I had all the levels written on the board and I wrote up on the board characters that thought would be there (Banquo was a unanimous first choice).  Then we continued into hell proper, level by level.  Each time I told them the punishment and they suggested characters that belonged there.  Every once and a while, we had debates on if a character should be included in hell (we decided that the old blind man in Frankenstein and Myrtle's dog from The Great Gatsby belonged in heaven) or if they should be moved to a different level as we descended.  They became determined to have at least one character in every level.  

For the finale, we decided to put the three worst sinners in Satan's mouth, like in The Inferno.  They chose Macbeth, Victor Frankenstein, and the author of "The Lady or the Tiger".  They were so mad when they read that story!  

It's a great idea and worked wonderfully as a review of all the characters since they had to explain why Ozymandias belonged level 8 or why Emily (from "The Rose for Emily") belonged in level 9 and so forth.  I wish I could properly credit the person who had the idea to begin with, but here it is if you can find use for it!

By the way, that white board is the one I added on the cheap in my room at the beginning of the year.  It still works great!  

Teaching the Graphic Novel to Struggling Readers

Want to skip to the lesson idea?  Jump down to the picture and start reading from there!

Comics have a bad reputation.  That stems all the way back to the late '50s when a guy named Dr. Frederick Wertham wrote a book called Seduction of the Innocent.  It details how comic books cause kids to be violent, disruptive, anxious, and homosexual.  It caused quite the stir and I could go on and on about it, but I will spare you today.  There were senate hearings and self-imposed censorship on it. Comics almost went out of business because of it and if it were not for the Marvel surge led by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko, they may just have disappeared.  

Several generations have passed since then and each generation has been more open to comics as a legitimate genre, but even so, many teachers think it is good only for students who struggle.  "Well, reading comics is better than nothing..." is a phrase thrown about quite often.  True, there are some low-brow comics out there, just as there are some low-brow novels, stories, movies, poems, etc.  However, there are also quite a bit of complex stories being told.  Maus and Persepolis are two that have broken the ranks.  Classical Comics does and EXCELLENT job adapting Shakespeare (and you can get them with the full text).  A good comic does more than illustrate the story - like a movie, the images should assist in telling the story, so that the words and images blend.  One without the other is no good.

One problem I've encountered with teaching Persepolis to struggling readers is that they often have trouble following which word balloon to read next and following along with who is actually speaking.  To combat this, for some of the chapters we are reading, I photocopy the pages and highlight the parts and let them read it like a play.  This way they get to model how to read and are able to focus on the story being told.  We don't do this for all chapters, but with the group I have now, I will probably do it for just under half of the chapters. 

If you are interested in discussing with your class the history of the CCA and Dr. Wertham's book, you can use my presentation.  I have basic notes on it because I was not setting it up for others, but it should be enough for you to spark some discussion.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tv3fSQfw-tvKn7eVBf9HUmsSn57e4pOU/edit#slide=id.p1

By the way, what is the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel?  Well, technically graphic novels tend to be longer and self-contained, but in reality "graphic novel" is often used by those who are embarrassed to be reading comics and want to make them sound more "literary".

Two Fun Test/Quiz Ideas

 I saw this on Facebook, so I cannot take credit for it.  I have also lost it on Facebook and cannot give credit to where it is due.  :(  

But the ideas are too interesting to pass up, so here they are:

This first one allows students to pick the number of points allotted for each question.  No question can be zero and you can set a limit on how much one question can be worth.  This gives the students a feeling of power over their performance and it gives the teacher a snapshot of where class confidence it (especially if the class overwhelmingly picks one question to low ball).    For my regular ed kids who will only see this as a nightmare to figure out mathematically, I am thinking about giving them some cheap stickers and they can put a certain amount on questions that they want to boos the worth of.  I am also thinking of using a variation of this on my next AP test.  I'll have a page with three short answer questions and they can pick one to be worth 3 points, one to be worth 5 points, and one to be worth 7 points (or something like that).

The other one is:

In this version, a student brings up their test/quiz and I look it over and tell them how many they got incorrect.  I do not tell them which ones are incorrect, though.  The student can then go back to their seat and try to figure out which ones they get wrong.  This works best with easy to grade questions like multiple choice.

I'm excited to try these out.  It will bring a bit of variety to the class and allow students a chance to showcase their skills and learn from their mistakes.

Spider-Man Unmasked!

Here is a great creative writing prompt to get kids pushing their thoughts a bit.  You do not need to be a comic book fan to participate (although if you are, there is that much more interest in it).  All you need is the ability to think divergently.

Show students this cover:

Now, supposing that everything shown on the cover is true for the story inside, how could this happen and Peter Parker still keep his identity secret?  We have these characters on the cover:

• Dr. Octopus - his four extra mechanical arms are just as strong as Spider-Man and allows him to reach far away.
• Peter Parker - the true identity of Spider-Man.  He has the strength, speed, and agility of a spider and has a nifty spider-sense that warns him of danger (which didn't help as the cover shows).
• Four random police officers
• Betty Brant - she is a secretary for the newspaper The Daily Bugle and Peter Parker's girlfriend at the time of this comic.
• J. Jonah Jameson - a newspaper editor who hates Spider-Man with a passion.

Let students write out how Peter Parker is able to keep his identity secret even though seven people clearly see him unmasked.  Give prizes to the most creative and the closest to the original.

So what is the real story?

Peter Parker has a cold, so he has lost all his spider powers.  Doc Ock, however, wants revenge on Spider-Man.  He notices that the Daily Bugle seems to get all the press on Spider-Man, so he breaks into their building, tells the editor, J. Jonah Jameson, that he will print a challenge to Spider-Man to meet him at a certain location.  He then kidnaps Jameson's secretary to insure that it gets done.  Peter Parker, fearful for his girlfriend's safety, dons his Spidey suit and goes after Doc Ock, even though he doesn't have his powers anymore.  Doc Ock beats him easily and unmasks him.  When he sees it is a teenager, he exclaims that the real Spider-Man is too scared to fight him and sent this kid in his place.  Figuring that was why Spider-Man's punches were so weak and why he was so easily beaten, Doc Ock throws Peter to the ground and leaves.  Betty and Jameson both think that Peter is quite the hero, albeit rather stupid, and the police, after toying with what to charge Peter with, finally leave them alone.

Teaching Inference with "The Chaser" by John Collier

John Collier has an excellent short story for teaching inference to high school students.  It is called, "The Chaser."

You can get a copy of it here: https://eerdalsblg.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/the_chaser-collier.pdf

If you've never read the story, do so now.  It won't take you long.  I'll wait.

For lower reading level classes, I like to put groups in teams and let them read it together and figure out why  the glove cleaner does.  The story is short (the version I found above has it in three pages, but the hard copy of the one I use in class is one page front and back) which is important to me.  I need my works short so we can focus on the matter at hand.

The story itself is fun. Now, when you or I read the story, we immediately see how this old man is setting up the younger man.  We understand that this "love" he will experience can only be solved with the "glove cleaner", but the students don't.  Especially 9th and 10th graders.  They struggle. 

So I let them try and figure it out as a competition.  The first group to figure it out gets a prize (homework passes or team points).  The second group gets a little less. The third group a little less.

I also have hints that they can buy with their team points (but you can maybe use something else if you aren't playing a game in your class).

How long will it take?  Well, it depends on how good your students are.  I always have a homework assignment that they should work on while waiting for the other teams to finish.  It usually takes about 30 minutes total, but I've had it last for over 45 minutes before.

For the Daring

My former IT guru had her job changed from IT to Digital Coach.  You may have one of these individuals at your school.  You may be like me and have no real idea of what a digital coach does.  I had assumed it was for helping teachers who were not tech savvy to get through mandatory technology needed for the school year.  That's only partly it.

I asked her how it was going in the new job and she said that she likes it, but it is boring because once the school year gets going, teachers are so swamped with day to day planning and grading, that they are not making use of her abilities to help design lessons using the different tech resources the school had available.

I thought about that for a while.  I felt bad that she was in a place that she felt wasn't going where she wanted it to go.  So I approached her a day or two later and said, "OK.  I'm teaching ninth grade again after quite a few years of not teaching it.  I hate teaching Romeo and Juliet.  Wow me and show me something tech I can do with it."  She took the challenge.

A few days later, she had several ideas ready to go for me.  The thing that caught my eye was making use of the iPads and green screen in the school learning commons (that's Newspeak for 'library').  I had, many years ago, allowed a class of seniors to remake the end of Macbeth in the Lord of the Rings setting.  We were inspired by the (then) relatively new Star Wars Macbeth.  It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun.  They painted my back wall blue (yes, I was teaching before the invention of green screens).  The kids really got into it.  I had actually offered it to my honors class at the time, but they were not very interested.  When someone in my regular class heard, they asked if they could do it.  I was skeptical, but they really wanted to do it.  It was fantastic.

So I was excited to find out that we had a green screen.  My librarian showed me the program and where the green screen was.  I decided to make a video myself to introduce the students to the program, with the benefit of giving me the chance to figure the equipment out.  It came out OK, but there was still a lot of work to be done:

While it is far from perfect, it was a lot of fun to make.  How did the project work out?  It was a lot of fun.  Will I use this again with low level ninth graders?  No.   Too much down time for most of the group to handle.  However, there was a handful that really dove into the project, including a young man that is not very interested in any school assignments who went above and beyond editing his group's project.  I will be using this idea for my mythology class next year and maybe even let my seniors make a 2 minutes hate when we do 1984 again.

So what is the moral of this post?  Go to your librarian or digital coach.  Ask them to wow you with the technology they have available.  I'll bet you'll be surprised.  Be daring and try a project or two.  You'll make their day, your students' day, and probably even your own (even if you do find yourself in a homemade Wonder Woman wig...).

Inference Using "Ordeal By Cheques"

We are doing the research paper, so I am strapped for time to update the blog right now, but here is an oldie that you might not have seen.

One of my son's middle school teachers gave this to him and I think it is absolutely brilliant.  I've used it ever since in my ninth grade short story unit.  Students who do not read well, can handle this one.  It is an excellent story to work inference skills.  I like to put it on the SmartBoard and do the discussion about what is really happening and who are the characters.  I do have to review a little bit about what are the components of a check, since these objects are becoming obsolete.

"Ordeal by Cheques" by Wuther Crue is a visual story that must have the entire plot inferred as we only get to see a series of checks written over a period of 28 years. The checks look like this:

Over the course of the story, little things change, such as the name that signs the check, the date, etc.  The students are left to figure out why these check are being written and who these people are that are having checks written to them.  Certain people get checks in the same amount while some checks are way too high for the time period.

Here is a copy of the story.  It is not long and if you teach inference skills or short stories, I encourage you to give it a shot in your class.  Let me know if you have any stories similar to this.

The Cover Letter and Resume - New Resource at Extreme English Teacher!

 

I've posted a new resource on the Extreme English Teacher store - a lesson on how to write a cover letter and resume!

I teach seniors and many of them do not know how to write either one of these.  Writing and communication falls under the purview of the English curriculum and it is a lesson that many of them can use right away.

It is a short lesson (will take about a class period).  The lesson has bonus slides to include if teaching it asynchronously and it has an assignment should you wish to take it from an introduction lesson to an activity.

As an added bonus, there is a slide with interview tips!  I have sat on enough hiring boards to know that people NEED these tips!

I also have it as a bundle so that you can save some money by buying both this lesson and Writing Formal Emails lesson.

If you try it out, let me know what you think and leave a rating on the store.  I try to keep all of my products highly affordable (we're all in this teaching game together, you know) and the ratings help me get noticed!

Visit the store at: Extreme English Teacher