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.

Sophistication Fight Club

*Note* The following post is aimed at AP Lit or AP Lang, but can easily work for other reasons in other levels.

Sometimes I am scrolling through Facebook and see a post for school that I want to save until I can sit down on my computer and look at later, so I'll send myself the link to the post.  Sometimes I forget I have done that and it sits in my inbox for many months.  It happened with this particular one on helping students achieve the sophistication point on their AP Exams.

Kristian Kuhn has this great lesson plan for helping students to be aware of how often they use "to be" in their writing.  It's a basic building block of composition. The problem is that when it gets overused, it makes the writing seem rudimentary.  Plus, it is one bugger of a verb to revise.

You can watch his video for yourself:

I was captivated by the idea, but I wanted to incorporate the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em idea even more, so I put the lesson that Kuhn created into this presentation - complete with video fo the robot boxing game:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MHwfcpBffQs3viusOfBI1vaYzccUFcXsabzUGkTUmWo/copy

And with places for students to input their entries.

I'm trying it out next week.  Let me know if you are or if you have another revision lesson you like!

Don't forget to subscribe to Kuhn's YouTube channel and consider checking out my TPT store.  You might enjoy the Archetypes lesson - I find it super helpful for all levels to understand poetry better.

Teach Pronoun Antecedents with Puns

 The phrase pronoun/antecedent agreement sounds difficult to students, but in reality it is not a hard concept.  Taking the time to teach it, though, is a worthwhile endeavor.  Students are often unclear in their writing and one problem is pronoun/antecedent agreement.  Plus learning how words can be unclear will help them to think out other problems that are not necessarily pronoun related.

The term antecedent just means whatever the pronoun is taking the place of.  When that object/person/place is ambiguous, students get errors in their writing.  To teach them this, show them how these puns are funny because the antecedent is unclear:

She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but she broke it off.

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger, then it hit me.

I borrowed, and then lost, my wife's audio book.  I'll never hear the end of it.

I offered my elderly neighbor $20 to give me a ride up her stair lift.  I think she's going to take me up on it.

The ghost teacher said to the class - watch the board and I'll go through it again.

Who says grammar can't be fun!

Got another good pun to add to the list?  Just drop it in the comments.

Avoiding Summary on the FRQ3 Prompt for AP Lit

I recently had a student ask for a lesson on how to avoid summarizing on the FRQ3 prompt.  I've always just said, "Don't summarize, instead imagine you are talking to me about a Star Wars or Marvel movie - you don't have to tell me what is in it, I already know.  Let's talk about what it all means."  I didn't have anything else on it.

So I started looking and everywhere I looked, all I saw were web sites stating, "Do not summarize," but no other practices on how not to.

So now I was faced with having to create it myself, I just didn't have the passion to do it.  Luckily for me, Mandi Morgan posted on the AP Lit Facebook group a lesson she had designed for summarizing and was asking for feedback from teachers.  It's pretty awesome.  She wrote three example paragraphs.  each one has its own slide and animation to reveal what is summary and what is analysis.

I copied and tweaked it to fit with what I needed for my class and added one more example and a handout to go with it.  Mandi did all the hard work on this one. I asked her if it was OK to share it with you fine people, and she said yes.  

Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EKA4UwMznRFxmb2ceUbgGCo7r7mx7Av61xBl5u0N_Q8/edit#slide=id.p

For the handout, it is just the examples on the presentation so that they can mark it themselves before revealing what is summary and what is analysis. That, and space to write their own paragraph.

Handout: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15WX1DM4VeQHGv6FgYFrxcU3UFmkiOI3WFAAptOfplbE/edit

Thank you, Mandi!  What about you?  Do you have a good lesson you'd be willing to share on this (or anything FRQ3 related)?  Tell me in the comments!

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