grammar

Please Explain This Phenomenon

September 15, 2011
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Please Explain This Phenomenon

  Update: The standing girl from yesterday finished day two today. She mixed it up a bit with some one foot for about ten minutes here and there. She said she doesn’t do it in other classes. Hmmm. Clue one. She said she will do it again tomorrow.  Inspired another kid in that class to stand. He only lasted about 25 minutes. We’re working on verbs now. We have watched “Verb! That’s What’s Happening” at least four times… (Aside: When I was a high school wrestler back in the 70′s, our assistant coach was a body builder. He was runner up Mr. California–he lost to our former governor out here in California–but he did win Best Arms. Needless to say, he mocked all of us mercilessly if we couldn’t lift a stack of weights taller than he was. But  I filled the 90 pound spot on the team, and could actually benchpress my weight…which was some sort of line for him. So I got mocked a bit less. Unless I took off my shirt. But every time he competed, we got our revenge. He would spend the week before a competition buffing up and ripping as he called it. By the

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“In your face!” (More Commas.)

October 6, 2010
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Before we start: This is the third year of this blog. I’ve run out of ways to refer to the current group of students. This year’s bunch, the current crop, this year’s geniuses, the current crew, etc. I’m getting tired of coming up with new ones. I have to come up with a nickname, a shorthand way of referring to them. I’m leaning toward TCS: The Current Shmarties. (“Mmmmm. Smarties.”) Ok. TCS are finally getting a bit entertaining. I had mentioned a while back that I was finding them a bit, shall we say, conventional. That’s starting to change. Maybe it’s the weather. Exactly a week ago, it was 107 degrees. Today it was 55 and  raining, and kids were warming their hands on the exhaust from my lcd projector. We were back working on commas, renaming the rules on the pink sheet: *Before the but *Three in a row *Double adjective *Intro *Interruption *I’m talking to you *Appositive They were still having trouble with the appositives. I think it’s the name. If I didn’t know that they like to put an appositive question on the state test every year, I’d be renaming that one too: My new best friend.

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Before the But.

October 5, 2010
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OMG. These kids do not know from commas this year.  Some years, they use commas like salt: they just sprinkle them everywhere. Sometimes it seems, there’s even a little pile of commas for dipping here and there. This year, it’s run-on sentences and single paragraphs as far as the eye can see, with no room to take a breath. (The “salt” for the current crew is capital letters. I swear I have never seen so many randomly-placed capital letters: “…and So i looked under the Bed and I Saw a creepy Looking maggot wriggling and then I ran And tripped on my…” Not since the colonial days have we seen such rampant, random capitalizing.) So we’re working on several of the rules for commas, and going one of the few handouts I use that came with the anthology years ago. (They’re called pink sheets since one of my servants a few years ago decided, as she was doing the copying, that “all grammar sheets should be pink.” OK. Even when we’re out of pink paper, and I have to copy them on goldenrod or canary or whatever, they’re still called pink sheets.) The first rule on the sheet talks about

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1903

April 13, 2010
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When I tried to put the ellipsis dots (…) as a title, my blog software couldn’t cope, and title in the permalink became 1903. So I’ll just call this entry 1903… Today I witnessed another sign of the continuing de-evolution of seventh graders  – isn’t each succeeding generation supposed to get smarter? We were working on apostrophes, and  they were doing ok until… #11. (Lets/Let’s) go to the store. Two-thirds of them picked “Lets.” And to add insult to injury, they thought I was joking when I reminded them that “let’s” is a contraction for “let us.” “Wha? Lettuce? What are you talking about?” OMG, second day back from vacation, and they’re already wearing me down… 46 more days… Awhile back I talked about how the head of our district instructional services department had to finally track me down in my classroom to get me to show up for an EL in-service. I suggested to her that the way things ended up — with her coming to observe me and then sticking around after to talk about the things she saw, and how I could incorporate  some of the stuff she was pitching into my routine — might be the way

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I Got Nothin’

March 27, 2010
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After almost 20 years of doing this job, I’d like to think I sort of know my way around the junior high psyche. Plus I remember 7th  and 8th grade like they were yesterday, and some might still accuse me of being a seventh grader yet. But every now and then…well, I got nothin’. Sometimes I have no idea what is going on in their heads. It’s actually one of the fun things about this kind of work. Last week we were again slogging through prepositional phrases. I was going around checking their pink sheet homework. The pink sheets are about the only thing I use from the vast array of materials provided with our hefty literature anthologies. They are basic grammar and punctuation worksheets, and after we go over them in class, we use clickers for other exercises, and watch some grammar rock and such. This week’s sheet on prep phrases had a section on placing them near the words they are modifying. You veterans know from the old misplaced modifiers and “dangling participles.” (“Don’t let your participle dangle” is right up there with “Don’t let your meat loaf.”) You know like, Johnny mailed a letter to his gramma

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Random Featured Post

You Gotta Have a Shtick (or a stick).

One of the things I like to say about teaching junior high is down at the bottom of this page in the footer. You’re too lazy to scroll, aren’t you? Fine. “Five shows a day, 180 days a year.” And there aren’t many crowds tougher than 7th graders. “This is boring.” The worst of all sins. Most of us who teach junior high have a shtick. A role we play, some isms we like to use again and again. Idiosyncrasies we play up for entertainment/attention value (oh the sharing I get when we talk about that word idiosyncrasy during “Monsters are Due on Maple Street“). The key is to make the shtick such a natural part of the classroom routine, that it doesn’t distract too much. Well, sometimes we need the distraction. There’s the Raffle King. There’s the Timer. There are the clickers. The Cage. Mental Floss. Nutty videos. MYOB. All of these are stalwart features of my classroom shtick. And as of a few years ago, there’s also the Quiet Stick. (four or five years ago – me visiting another teacher’s classroom before school) “Leenie! What the shiggy are you doing? Where’d you get this, and WHY ARE YOU [...]

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Mr. Coward has been teaching on the beautiful central coast of California since 1989.

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Recent Comments

  • mrC commented on It’s Go Time!@Sarah-Most excellent! Keep up the good work, and don't let any of them talk you out of it. Glad to hear your kids recognize the value too. Fight the good fight!
  • Mrs. M~ commented on Illin’Feel better soon! There is nothing worse than being at school and trying to be "on" when you feel like death.
  • Sarah commented on It’s Go Time!I just came across your blog...I am a second year teacher and I am currently reading The Outsiders aloud to my seventh graders. I read it to them last year, too. I catch a lot of criticism for reading it to them...but they LOVE to have me read to them. I actually had a group
  • joan commented on Illin’I'm on day two of out-with-the-crud. I needed the rest. Hope you're in tip top shape by Monday!
  • mrC commented on “The Sub Used One of Your Sticks!”That one oughta be strung up like they used to do to horse thieves.
  • Heather commented on “The Sub Used One of Your Sticks!”The last sub I had left no note at all and broke the arm of my spinny chair by leaning back in it so far that he fell in the floor. The kids all said he was the best sub ever. I politely asked the school secretary to never have him sub in
  • mrC commented on The Future of Space Travel@Heather: Gawd I hate that. I think I even posted about it awhile back. @Kelli: This reminds me of high school. I went to a Jesuit high school (all boys) and for our Friday football rallies, we would import cheerleaders from other schools to be a part of the rally. And the girls would always begin
  • Heather commented on The Future of Space TravelMy eighth graders just have the habit of prefacing every question with, "I have a question." And announcing "I'm done" when they complete an assignment.
  • Kelli commented on The Future of Space TravelIs it bad that I sometimes start my stories with "Okay, so...."...? I guess the kids have rubbed off on me. Sigh.
  • Kelli commented on Blogging the Scoring Session (Part I)Ugh! Been there. I have been to those "Scoring and Rubric" type meetings in two different states now... Not fun, and not entirely informative, either.
  • Meg commented on No Groove Yet (Also: The Giver and No Homework Returns)There was a district I student taught in that hand the no fail policy. I child could not be held back a grade, even if they did absolutely nothing the whole year, until they were in high school. It took most of the middle schoolers about 3 seconds to realize they didn't have
  • Kelli commented on No Groove Yet (Also: The Giver and No Homework Returns)You know, that whole "no-zero" policy goes hand-in-hand with the "no-failure" or "no-retention" policy, and my school district is a definite contributor to this madness. I can understand the desire to stop giving zeros and MAKE the kids do the work (giving countless opportunities until successful), but I have been in a situation where
  • commented on Obligatory Santa VideoWe have an unofficial "no zero" policy. It takes a little extra effort on the teacher's part to get all of the students to complete their assignments but we have made it work. The thing that was most helpful was instituting a "homework detention" that is separate from discipline detention. If a

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