Say what?

I need to make it clear that I think that the English folks at Virginia's Department of Education do an excellent job making all kinds of resources available to teachers and students in support of their Standards of Learning Assessments. They also allow teachers to apply to work on the committees that see the tests through just about from start to finish. Every effort is made to construct valid measures of students' abilities to read and write.

But I have to tell you about the practice writing tool that is available on line. It's a stripped down word processing program that children will use to type their essay responses to prompts in March. The tool is user friendly, right down to my favorite feature-- the indent button. You would not believe how many times I have to reteach how to indent a paragraph...as in literally. But that's a different story for a different day.

This entry is all about the spell check feature. This is the first year students may not use paper dictionaries, but they can use a feature that will underline suspicious words in red and offer suggestions, if you left click your mouse. It's pretty awesome, if you ask me.

Lissen here, all y'all. That spell check doesn't care for dialect atall. Makes sense, right? I think so, but here's where I got into trouble. I was modeling an essay for my students using the "if I could visit anywhere in the world" prompt. Well, I decided to go back in time and visit with my grandparents at their home. It was a lovely summer night, full of corn shuckin' and sweet tea drinkin', and my grandpa talkin' like my grandpa did.

The words were "git" and "gonna." They look harmless enough, don't they? When I was showing my kids that dialect will most likely be considered a misspelling by the program, and that they should just double check to make sure they are spelling their dialect consistently and purposefully, if needed-- I clicked on the suggested words to prove my point.

Hmmm. One of the recommended words for "git" was "tit." I innocently clicked "gonna" to be rewarded with "gonads." Just so you can picture this, I had set up my projector in order to magnify the program on the screen in the front of the room.

I can't really say I was surprised. I mean, those words are in the dictionary. I just found myself wondering about the essay that would necessitate those words, and the scorer who would undoubtedly need a cold drink after work. And then I pictured a young Hunter S. Thompson sharpening his wit for a standardized test, and my heart got a little warm just thinking about the whole ding-dang lexicon being open to all of our kids.

Groundhog Day...Again

Remember your first year of teaching?  Wasn't ignorance bliss?

Yours, I mean-- not the students'. You taught something once, and they learned the skill. Ahhhhhh.

Wasn't it frustrating to have to teach skills they should have learned in 5th, 6th and 7th grade?   I mean, what's going on?  Are those teachers just kicked back reading romance novels while the kiddos run amok?

Once you put it all together you gasped in horror.  Those teachers were teaching, so were you. Your students were going to advance to the next grade with no ability to demonstrate some of the lessons that you taught them.

Ouch.  Yeah.  I can still feel the burn.

I feel it every time an 8th grader asks me what similes, metaphors, hyperbole and personification are...again.

And again.

If you're like me, that last one always gets you.  Personification has all of the quietude of Vegas.  PERSONification.  It's like a neon sign with dancing girls wearing fancy costumes and big, foam "We're #1" fingers pointing to P-E-R-S-O-N.  It's the official "If it were a snake" literary device.

I feel it for every apostrophe a child rains down on his paper to make something plural. I feel it every time there's an "a" slammed next to a "lot."   Contractions?  To, Two, Too/  Were, We're, Where/  There, Their, They're...   I could go on.

I'm not talking about the Queen's English.  I'm talking about what it takes to read and write on grade level.  Lawd.

This morning I stopped by the workroom after dawn cracked to flip the switch on the copier, so it would be ready for the first user.  Someone had left a worksheet behind.  Golden.  It was full of commonly misused and confused words.

Are you going to suffocate under (to, two, too) many papers to grade?  (Your, You're) students are over (there, they're, their) crawling out of the library's window towards freedom.

Okay.  It didn't say that exactly, but that was the format.  Eighth graders can always use more practice with these skills.  AND I just happened to read about a cool dry-erase marker technique on a Facebook page.  Teachers were advising a French instructor to allow students the chance to write their vocabulary words on their desks for practice. They are (They're) easily erased.  Cool.

So, instead of handing out the worksheet, I read each sentence aloud and indicated the word that I wanted them to spell.  They wrote it.  I walked around the room to check their work.  If they were correct, I told them to erase the word to get ready for the next.  If they were incorrect, they tried again.  And, yes, I retaught contractions.

Again.

And I bet the fat lady hasn't sung on that one yet either.

(Luckily, I stocked up on dry-erase markers at Walgreens during the Back-To-School sales like a true hoarder who had no idea how 50 markers would come in handy during this school year.)

Crooked Letter Crooked Letter

There's no end to what Post-it Notes can do for you.   Why not let them help you teach children how to spell, if that's something that's on your to-do list?  

I'm sure she wasn't the first person to think of the idea, but Liz Sheffield has written a short  article about the simple process.

The Daily Spark

"The Daily Spark series gives teachers an easy way to transform downtime into productive time.   The 180 exercises-- one for each day of the school year-- will take students five to ten minutes to complete and can be used at the beginning of class, in the few moments before turning to a new subject, or at the end of class." (from the introduction)

Writing, poetry, journal writing, spelling & grammar, vocabulary, Shakespeare and SAT: English Test Prep!

The Daily Spark is full of possibilities.   For most 8th graders, five to ten minutes will not be enough to complete the writing activities.   That's okay.   Be flexible.   Use the prompts that best fit your students and the time frame that you have.   Some are intriguing enough to transform into longer writing assignments.

Simplify the topics, or add rigor.   I have done a quick browse through the books that I own penciling light circles around the page numbers that would most likely interest my students.

Here's a sample topic from the Writing edition:

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Sweltering, Not Hot

Even the best writers rely on obvious words.   Practice mental flexibility by writing a paragraph describing a typical August afternoon without using the words hot, humid, heat or sun.
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Please note that the above material is copyrighted by Spark Publishing, but I thought they wouldn't mind if I just gave you a little preview.   You may purchase the book on Amazon http://amzn.com/1411402286