Shameless Plug

Teaching ACES step-by-step

Do you have a solid plan for getting your students to answer the constructed response section of state tests or to just be able to form the basic elements of a short answer question?  If not, consider below:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/XET-Teaching-ACES-for-Constructed-Responses-12163122

ACES provides a formula for students to think about when formatting a constructed response or short answer question. It is the basic structure for organized writing and is often used to set students up for larger works that will require thesis statements and paragraphs. It is also often used on state testing.

The poem "Ozymandias" is used to break down each component in each lesson.

Teaching this basic structure can be time consuming and irritating for both student and teacher. This pack aims to alleviate some of that stress on both by scaffolding the process and having students practice one element at a time, building upon previous lessons until all elements are mastered.  It can be done in a series of four days or less, if needed, but I prefer to teach this one day a week over four weeks.

After going through the example, students get a chance to practice each part ( lesson one is only A, lesson two is A and C, lesson three is A, C, and E, and the final lesson is A, C, E, and S.

The primary text is "Ozymandias" by Shelley and students will practice on each section using passages from "Fire and Ice" by Frost, The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, Dune by Herbert, and Invisible Man by Ellison.

Each lesson has a student worksheet to let them practice with a small reading passage.

I created this last year for use with my inclusion class and it worked wonders.  It made it where they could grasp what we were asking for and by breaking it down into chunks, they were not overwhelmed.  I have an honors class this semester and will be using it with them as well.

Multiple Choice Monday - Group Style

 This was designed for AP Lit, but the frame works for any multiple choice activity.

I get tired of just plain old individualized reading passages with multiple choice questions (though there is a place for that). Since my class is already in teams for a class game of Survivor, I decided to let them complete this in their teams (though you can just put them into groups).

Group work for multiple choice is a great idea as long as your groups with talk amongst themselves.  This way they explain why they thought it was A or C or whatever and bounce their ideas off one another.  This sharing of why they think one answer is better than another helps them to develop strategies to better break down these answer choices.  Each person in the group notices different things about the passage, questions, and answer choices.

I had two passages with a total of 23 questions that I got from a test prep workbook.  I chose one poem and one prose.  I drew this expertly I-could-have-been-an-art-teacher grid on the board:

 I then printed out letter choices for each team.  The template I made gave me 5 of each letter A-E (I know AP Lit doesn't use E anymore, but my older passages were made before this change).  Just to be mean, once they were in their groups and got their bag of 25 letter choices, I made them pick any two to discard (they only need 23 answers, after all).  I know this could result in them not being able to answer a question correctly, but they will know what they wanted the answer to be.  I did make sure that to start with, each group had enough letter choices to get all the questions correct.  It then depended on which two they discarded.  No need for you to redesign the wheel if you want to do something similar - here are the letters ready to be printed.

Once they had time to work out their best answers, they started taping the answers to the board.  They could have put their answers up at any moment, but none of them wanted to let the other groups know what they thought the answer could be.  So we ended up with this chaotic attack upon the board.

We went through the answers and circled the correct ones on the board.  For any the class had questions about, we took the time to break it down together.  All in all, the whole thing took about an hour and twenty minutes.  They did a lot of discussion and if they found that they did not have enough letter answer choices for what they thought was needed, they had to start weighing how much confidence they had in each to pick the ones worthy enough of the number of Bs they had.

How it ended:

For our game purposes, each group got 25 points for each correct answer.  Fun for MC Monday!  

If you have an alternative way of assessing multiple choice or you tried this and made alterations to it, let me know either in the comments or in an email.  

Want more?  Here are some other alternative ways to tackle Multiple Choice Mondays:

• Speed Training
• Reverse Process of Elimination
• Race Horse MC (borrowed this idea from elsewhere)

If you made it this far into the article, say hi in the comments!  :)

Tech Tuesday

 Short post today, but a handy dandy trick nonetheless!  Store your videos on a Google Slides presentation.  This does three things:

1. Makes it easy to find your favorite video clips from semester to semester.

2. Gets rid of annoying ads!  When you embed a video into a Slides presentation, it does not play the ad at the front nor does it interrupt the video with ads in the middle.

3. By using the video format tools, you can choose where to start and stop the video as is most befitting for your lesson.

I usually try to put notes in the speaker notes section to remind me when to use the video (I forget what I was thinking sometimes!) and information to help me find it again should the link no longer work or it was taken down by YouTube.  

Mind boggling?  No, but if you aren't using this technique, try it!  It makes things so much easier.

Anglo-Saxon Riddles, Cheating, and The Hobbit

I love taking on Anglo-Saxon riddles in class.  I'm sure you already know these and what these are, but I have a tiny bit of a twist in mine.  

I like to use them as our first competition.  We break into teams and play a game through the first quarter.  Teams win and lose points for various things along the way.  The first competition is this presentation:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vciEzmHmeE9yOCbAijSymo4M_PaqFmXzz2zYxcgRGEU/copy

I have seven Anglo-Saxon riddles on the slides presentation.  At this point, we have already talked about Beowulf and so I explain to them that we have very little from the Anglo-Saxon period since most works were written and stored in monasteries, which were often burned by raiding Norsemen and those that survived had a difficult time making it past King Henry VIII's monastery burning phase.  We have some poems (which I just cannot subject my students to - if you like those poems, more power to you!), one surviving copy of Beowulf, and riddles.

The problem I ran into was that when competing, students would often quickly type the first few words into their phone and find the answer.  So I have altered these.  Wasn't sure that would do it at first, but there you go.  For all intents and purposes, they are pretty much the same as you would find on any web site, but the slight alterations seems to have squashed the kids looking for the quick answer.

If I have time, I often try to work in the "Riddles in the Dark" passage from The Hobbit, which is taken from this idea.  Watching the scene from the movie works well, or the cartoon if you are mean.  I also give those who are into it a chance to see the original chapter.

If you ever read the book, unless you have one of the first printings, you have a revised edition.  Maybe you read the introduction where Tolkien says that he didn't write the book, just found the works and translated it.  He goes on to say that he had to make changes because he discovered that Bilbo had lied about his initial encounter with the ring.

What happened was that the original had Bilbo having just as much as a happy-go-lucky time in the cave as pretty much everywhere else in the adventure.  When he went to write The Lord of the Rings, he needed to make the ring a bit more dark, so he changed this chapter.

And, if you want it, here is an Instant Old English page created by Catherine N. Ball for you to use.  It is not mine and the original page I found it on is no longer up and running.

What about you?  Feel free to share anything that you use when teaching the Anglo-Saxon time period and since we are creating a old-timey Dungeons and Dragons vibe here, check out my Literature and Lairs Character Analysis activity.

Dahlesque and Other Author Words to Use

As you may have heard, we have a new word added to the English dictionary: Dahlesque

Here is the Oxford English Dictionary's definition:

Dahlesque:

Resembling or characteristic of the works of Roald Dahl - Dahl's writing, particularly his children's fiction, is typically characterized by eccentric plots, villainous or loathsome adult characters, and gruesome or black humor.

The word had been around since 1983, but been recognized as an official word just the past several years.


So your homework is to use the word today.  Just drop in conversation like it is a word that you always use.

Can't get enough Roald Dahl?  There were other chapters that never made it to print along with children who never made it into the final bookTry this chapter that was removed from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  It is from an earlier draft where there were at least ten, maybe fifteen children taking the tour through the factory: The Warming Candy Room.  Plus, if you just want more odd tid bits, like the name of the third Charlie book

Of course, Dahl isn't the only author who has a word named after him:

Orwellian - named after George Orwell to describe over bearing government censorship and surveillance as in 1984.

Kafkaesque - named after Franz Kafka to mean something that is nightmarish

Dickensian - named after Charles Dickens to describe poverty like those featured in any of his novels.

Byronic - named after George Gordon, Lord Byron and is used to describe a hero that is brooding, lonely, and romantic.

Did I miss any?  I must have!  Let me know in the comments section.

EXTRA CREDIT! O.K., teachers love this as much as students so extra credit goes to whomever can tell me what is the title of the third Charlie book that Dahl never completed?  Just put it in the replies below!

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!

Friday Funnies with Prometheus

 Just a quick one for those of you who teach mythology - A guy by the name of Mark Weinstein created a whole comic strip of Prometheus getting his liver eaten each day by the Vulture.   Here is an example:

Had to share!

You can read all of them online at The Whole Enchilada