Tuesday, January 7, 2025

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!


Friday, January 3, 2025

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.

Thursday, November 14, 2024

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.

Monday, October 28, 2024

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:

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Two Annotation Practices: Porphyria's Lover and Life Is Sweet at Kumansenu

 Here are two annotation practices you are welcome to make use of in your classroom.  If you would like to share a practice of yours with me, I would be delighted to see it and potentially use it in my class.  Just send it to me in an email.  

The first one is the first poem I use with my AP Lit students when we start our poetry unit (they've gotten other poems, but this officially starts our poetry section.  It is "Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning, one of my favorite poems of all time.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14q5wdaJYzZTZvA3f5BKqHqlGGpcbpObfdd_6-fF4e_4/edit?tab=t.0

The directions are on the back and guides them for what to look for.


The other practice is one I am trying with my English II Honors students to step up their game a bit.  It is, for most of them, their first go at real annotation, so I built it up as a big deal.  It is with the short story "Life Is Sweet at Kumansenu" by Abioseh Nicol.  It was fun to see that some of the students got excited and whipped out a pouch full of highlighters or color markers.  

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1krB0CmLVjGv-UaySLzLDNW4ah2LAH6dT3twRAcn1j_g/edit?tab=t.0

We had just finished our archetype notes, which is why I specifically go out of my way to mention that in the directions.  If you have students struggling to discern deeper meaning in texts, then I suggest teaching archetypes.  It is a game changer.

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

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.

Monday, September 30, 2024

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:


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