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.

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.

Daily Grammar Practice Plan of Attack

Our school wanted to get all the English teachers teaching grammar and in a way that was consistent with each other.  So the program Daily Grammar Practice was chosen.  It's not a bad program.  I like the way I taught grammar better because it was more my style, but it is nice knowing that we are all working toward the same process.

If your school uses DGP, you may find that students feel a little overwhelmed with everything that could possibly be labeled on Monday and Tuesday. I find that by providing some structure and creating a pattern for what to look for, students are able to process it faster and soon will be able to do it without constantly looking at notes.  That's the key to grammar practice - students can recognize it in the wild.

If you want to give it a shot, try it out.  You can get it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16m2uuAc4SfNrD-SPqY7WobWJbycEpACzYkpzOq-SpWc/copy

I just made it and haven't classroom tested it long enough to find everything that could be tweaked.  If you have comments on how to make it better, please share them with me either on this post or by shooting me an email.  

Teaching Critical Thinking Skills with Fairy Tales

 I'm going to try something new this semester with my regular/inclusion English II class.  Over the Christmas break, my wife and I picked up a puzzle book (think escape room in a book).  We've done this before and some of those books can be very hard.  This one is not overly hard, but not overly easy either.  A good enough mix.  The book is The Puzzle Book of the Brothers Grimm.

There are four fairy tales that you have to work through - Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Mother Hulda, and Rapunzel.  The links are to Google Docs I have of the original Grimm's tale. I figured most of my students have probably not read the original, so maybe I'll use those as texts in my class and may add some state test reading comprehension questions to go with them later.  You are welcome to them to use as you would like.  The Hansel and Gretel tale is six pages long, but the other three are only about three pages long. You can buy the puzzle book on Amazon if you are interested.

How does this fit into my class?  Well, my regular level and inclusion classes often struggle with looking past plot level.  Anything to get them thinking critically helps.  Since the puzzles themselves are fairly short, I'm thinking it might be a fun warm-up activity to breaks them into groups of two or three and let them try and figure it out.  Each puzzle comes with three clues (on different pages), so I can factor that in and let them buy the clue with part of their winnings.  In the book, you score 5 "reeds" for each correctly guessed riddle, minus 1 reed for each clue and wrong answer.  I am using "Bobcat Paw Prints" in my class for incentives, so I will just substitute those.  Here is what a typical puzzle looks like:

It's always like this - two page spread and many of the puzzles are visual like this, which I think my regular students will find appealing.  

This may flop, but I've enjoyed figuring out the puzzles for the first fairy tale, so I figured I would go for it!

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.

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.

Multiple Choice Monday - 3 Chances

 Here's another fun, easy way to practice multiple choice, whether it be for AP Lit, AP Lang, or just practicing for the state test.

What you will need:

• Multiple choice practice sheets/passages (I just pick up prep books for AP Lit to get the practice questions in the back - the bonus on that is they also provide reasons why an answer is right and why the others are incorrect).
• A way to scan answers (I use ZipGrade)  Zip Grade allows me a scan a test on my phone and get the correct answers quickly.  You can just use it cold, or you can take the time to input your students and give them a code number.  If you do, it will provide tracking data on how well they are doing.  The best part is, you can use it for free if you are just doing a few tests here and there, but if you want to use it more, the cost is just around $6 to $7 a year.  Yes, you read that correctly.  It works on both Android and Apple devices.  No, I am not getting paid to endorse these guys.

OK, so next up I give them their passages (I like giving two passages at a time for my AP Lit students, which is about 25 questions a pop).  I encourage them to mark up their passage sheet with how confident they are in their answers and what may be a close second choice for them.  Then, the fun begins.  They have an answer sheet with two sections on the front and one on the back.   

Once they have filled out the first section, I scan it and tell them the number incorrect.  Because I am devious and enjoy the pain and suffering of my students, I do not tell them which ones they got incorrect.  They then can decide if that grade is good enough, or go back and make changes and bring it up to me to scan for #2, which I will once again tell them how many are incorrect.  If time allows before the end of class (we have a 90 minute period), they can go for scan #3.   I am a jerk, but not a total jerk, so I will take their best of the three. 

Why do this?  For one, it breaks up the monotony of multiple choice practice.  It also gives them a chance to really consider their process of elimination.  They go back and look at the ones they were not sure about and give them extra scrutiny that they otherwise would not have done.

I also printed out the question/answer explanations so that once a student is finished, he or she may check their answers.

If you have alternative ways of practicing your multiple choice, let me know in the comments or shoot me an email!

Want more multiple choice activities?  Try:

• Group Style
• Reverse Process of Elimination
• Speed Training
• Race Horse Style (borrowed from some other extreme teacher out there!)