The Hyphen - It IS Important

Basic hyphen rules review:

Use a hyphen:

1. When the creator of the word used one (which is why we have a hyphen between Spider-Man and not Superman)
2. For two words are working together as a single adjective (chocolate-covered raisins)
3. Between the tens and ones of numbers (twenty-one)
4. To avoid confusion (re-elect)
5. With the prefixes ex-, all-, self- (ex-wife, all-inclusive, self-driving)
6. With any prefix attached to a capitalized word (pre-World War II)
7. Before the suffix -elect (president-elect)

Do NOT use a hyphen when:

1. Two words are working together as a single adjective AFTER the noun (Those raisins are chocolate covered)
2. Between other place values (two hundred sixty-five)

Check Out the Store!

Extreme English Teacher now has a Teacher Pay Teachers store.

The focus of the store is to provide resources for teachers of low-level, low motivated English students.  They are all activities and lessons that I have used in the past with success.

I am working on a larger Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time unit pack and will post it shortly, but you can get the freebie guide to Acing Reading Comprehension State Tests right now.  If you like it, give it a rating, please!

Word of the Day - Villain

It's Dr. Evil, I didn't spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called "mister," thank you very much. 

So our word of the day is VILLAIN, but what's the fun in that?  We already know this to mean bad guy or antagonist.  An evil character designed to push the plot.

But that definition wasn't used for the word until 1822.  Before that, it was used to mean a peasant.  Here is what the Online Etymology Dictionary has to say about it:

c. 1300 (late 12c. as a surname), "base or low-born rustic," from Anglo-French and Old French vilain "peasant, farmer, commoner, churl, yokel" (12c.), from Medieval Latin villanus "farmhand," from Latin villa "country house, farm" (from PIE root *weik- (1) "clan").

 The most important phases of the sense development of this word may be summed up as follows: 'inhabitant of a farm; peasant; churl, boor; clown; miser; knave, scoundrel.' Today both Fr. vilain and Eng. villain are used only in a pejorative sense. [Klein]

The root word is where we get the word "villa" from, meaning a large and fancy country home.  We know "village" to be a small country town (villa meaning country) and "villager" meaning one who lives in a village.  A "villager" at one time meant an uncouth country hick, instead of one living in a village.

So when you are giving that Middles Ages introduction and you hit the feudal system, consider letting them know that serfs and peasants were the original villains of the world.

Love Stinks -or- Eight Brief Tales of Lovers

Here's a good lesson if you teach mythology or if you want to incorporate some myths into your world literature course.

The lesson is a type of "jigsaw" group lesson.  This can easily be adapted to any type of short story.

These myths come from Edith Hamilton's Mythology.  I bet there are class sets somewhere in your school.  If you do not currently have a mythology class, then they are probably collecting dust in your Latin teacher's room.

Your school undoubtedly has a class set of these somewhere.

Break your class in to teams.  Depending on the size of your class, you may have to adjust these numbers, cut out a myth or two, or something like that.

One member of the team will go up and get a note card for each teammate.

Round One
Each team member picks one of these four stories:
  "Pyramus and Thisbe"
  "Orpheus and Eurydice"
  "Cyex and Alycone"
  "Pygmalion and Galatea"
Once they have read the story, each person will write down one question on their card.  The group can (and should) work together to come up with the question.

Then return everyone to their original groups (the above will take approximately 12-15 minutes).  They will teach their story to their group.

Do the same thing with Round Two
  "Baucus and Philemon"
  "Endymion"
  "Daphne"
  "Alpheus and Arethusa"

Once the groups have read and returned to teach their team, collect the cards.

Now pit the teams against each other.  Using the cards as the question base, play some game for team points, bonuses, or whatever incentive you like to use.


'nuff said!

Why You Should Be Teaching _The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time_ to Your High Schoolers

This book is so great for seniors on so many levels.

(image link)

If you are not aware of what the book is about, it is a story told from the perspective of a fifteen year-old boy who is on the spectrum.  He is investigating the murder of a neighbor's dog, but there is another story going on that he doesn't see.  It  is this other story that is so captivating for students.

So why should you teach it?

1. Students who HATE to read LOVE this book.  I often teach regular ed and EC inclusion students who have a strong dislike to reading.  It may be for many reasons that they hate reading in general, but no matter the cause, they almost all love this book.  I have experienced many non-readers reading ahead on their own.  Many students tell me it is the only book they've read cover to cover since they can remember.  

On my web site, I have a poll that students can take anonymously.  Here is the break down as of now:

Loved it - 32%
It was pretty good - 47%
It was OK - 17%
It's pretty bad - 1%
Hated it - 3%

I challenge you to find a book with better approval ratings for students who hate to read.

Why is this?  Well, the book is written on both a simple and complex level.  Just reading the words is simple.  You are not going to pair this book up with an SAT vocabulary unit.  However, the story is very complex, so students can understand and follow, but do not feel liked it is "dumbed down".

2. Students who LOVE to read LOVE this book.  My colleagues who teach honors have terrific success with this book.  Despite not having a high vocabulary level, the story has layers of complexity that make you forget the word choice level.

3. It is a great book to use to teach:

• Perspective - The narrator here is unreliable, not that in he lies (like I am sure Van Helsing is when he records what he does while alone with Mina Harker), but because he doesn't fully understand what is happening.  
• Prediction - There are so many clues and red herrings that it is fun to watch the students try and figure out what the "real" story is, as well as trying to figure out who killed the dog.  When one of my nonreaders make a prediction that later comes true, they get so excited.
• Dramatic Irony - Since we know, at least half way through the book, what is happening while the narrator is trying to figure it out, there is a certain amount of suspense created.

4. It promotes autism awareness.  You have students on the spectrum in your class.  Your students interact with people on the spectrum every day and may not even realize it.  This book will show how Christopher processes information.  The students relate to him and are completely invested in what happens.  Students will also want to share stories of their sisters, cousins, nephews, etc. that are on the spectrum.  Students who are on the spectrum, at least in the last decade I've been teaching this, like having a protagonist they can identify with.  Sometimes I will have a student identify themselves as autistic and other times they do not, but the book handles it so well, that I have yet to have a student on the spectrum not like that we read it.

For that matter, it also brings to the forefront disability awareness.  My inclusion teacher hosts the EC Spring Games for the district where the more severe and profound students in all the schools from elementary to high school come and compete in various events.  After reading this book, my students want to volunteer to help host.

5. It is easy to be creative with it.  There are so many off topic chapters that it provides several opportunities to do something different with your students.  From getting them to fake photographs to playing Monty Hall to searching for constellations - there are so many ways to bring this book to life.

6. It is flexible.  The chapters are generally short, so that allow the freedom to stop and start in a variety of places.  This makes it easy to allow conversation to develop in class as well as each chapter ending provides an organic opportunity to let kids express what they are thinking.


If you teach this book, leave a comment and tell me a success story.  If you want to teach this book, keep your eyes open.  I am currently putting together everything I use in my class and plan on putting it up on Teachers Pay Teachers soon.

Coming Soon...

I am resetting this blog.  There will be new posts coming soon.  These posts will be aimed at giving you lesson ideas, plans, analyzing resources available, and more all specifically aimed at those teaching students who struggle for any reason - learning disabilities, lack of motivation, low ability, no support at home, etc.

I look forward to this new start for the Extreme English Teacher Blog!

Advertising in Class

I could also name this post: Making Use of Useless Tech

Several years ago, a company called Channel One installed TVs in all the classrooms in the school.  All we had to do was watch Channel One for the first ten minutes of class (it was some school based news show).  Either our contract was up or they went defunct, I don't know which (this was before I got to this school), either way the TVs are still in the room, but not being used.

Then someone had the great idea of using cable for these TVs.  Since the devices were all connected together, we would have to request that the TV be set to a particular channel in the library (we could only watch what the library was watching).  This worked out great for anyone who was teaching history in the making when something big was happening in the news and for a few other things.  Then cable decided that they wanted to charge the school for every TV in each classroom, so we dropped cable.

Now there is a useless TV in every classroom.  So I decided to turn it into advertisement.  Ads for my class, that is.



What This Is

I used a Google Slides Presentation to pull this off.  On each slide I put something I wanted them to see.  There is a list of Achieve 3000 articles they need to complete, the schedule (especially during the early days when the schedule keeps changing to accommodate homeroom), where we go for fire drill, a grammar lesson, a word of the week, a literary term of the week, homework assignments, and ad for a book we have available for check out in class, ads for upcoming assignments, something weird about an author we will read, etc.  I also put in a meme and an image just to keep it from seeming too educational. 

The slides change up every week.  If I were more on the ball, I would pick a day to switch out different slides instead of changing them all at once.

How I Did This

There is no option in Google presentation to have it automatically run, but if you choose PUBLISH TO WEB, you will be able to set up the time for each slide and have it loop.  So each morning I publish it to the web and put it on my TV, which is now my third display. 

To get the TV to be the third display, I did have to spend a little money.  I paid $30 to get a 75' HDMI cable.  I ran that from the TV, across the ceiling, and down behind my computer.  The only problems I've had with doing this is that sometimes my SmartBoard gets confused on which monitor it should work with.  That's an easy fix.

Other Uses

Now that I have this third display, I can post notes on it while students are watching a movie, put other images or web pages on it that I want them to look at while I'm giving a presentation, stream news on it if something big is happening in the world while we keep class going, and I'm sure there will be other things I'll experiment with as I continue this.


Look - kids are going to get distracted by something.  I would rather it be something I want them to learn.  And it works, too!  The other day, I opened the door for a female teacher who was leaving my room.  When I did, one of my students yelled out, "Chivalrous!" which is our word of the week.  So they are seeing these words, terms, and grammar lessons.  One more way to teach!