Ideas That Really Work!: Activities for Teaching English and Language Arts

207 Pages·2009·2.75 MB·English

by  Cheryl Miller Thurston

Ideas That Really Work!
Activities for English and Language Arts
Cheryl Miller Thurston
Cottonwood Press, Inc.
Fort Collins, Colorado
Fourth edition copyright © 2009 by Cottonwood Press, Inc.
Third edition copyright © 2004 by Cottonwood Press, Inc.
Second edition copyright © 1994 by Cottonwood Press, Inc.
First edition copyright © 1991 by Cottonwood Press, Inc.
Permission is granted to reproduce activities in this book for the purchaser’s own personal use
in the classroom, provided that the copyright notice appears on each reproduction. Otherwise,
no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without
written permission from Cottonwood Press, Inc.
Cottonwood Press, Inc.
109-B Cameron Drive
Fort Collins, Colorado 80525
www.cottonwoodpress.com
1-800-864-4297
Print ISBN 978-1-877673-84-9
E-book ISBN 978-1-936162-06-2
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Rochelle Dorsey
Illustrations by Patricia Howard and Ann Blackstone
Special thanks to Laura Stanovich, a student in Brian Wedemeyer’s eighth-grade honors writ-
ing class at Thunderbolt Middle School in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, for discovering an
important error in the “Following Instructions” activity in an earlier edition of this book.
Table of Contents
Ideas, Ideas, Ideas
Homemade Bread and English Compositions..............................................................................9
“I Decided to Just Teach”.............................................................................................................13
Helping Students Help Each Other.............................................................................................14
Vocabulary Study Doesn’t Need to Be Boring.............................................................................16
Cars in Class.................................................................................................................................18
Cars...............................................................................................................................................20
Imagine That.................................................................................................................................21
Helping Students Learn to Appreciate Differences.....................................................................24
Eccentrics......................................................................................................................................25
Everyone Is Different....................................................................................................................27
Following Instructions..................................................................................................................28
Following Instructions: A Test.....................................................................................................30
Cartoon Prose...............................................................................................................................31
Cartoon Time...............................................................................................................................32
The Truth vs. the Whole Truth...................................................................................................38
You Can Prove Anything If You Want.........................................................................................39
The “M”–ey Awards (Teacher Instructions).................................................................................40
The “M”–ey Awards (Student Instructions).................................................................................41
Kerfuffle........................................................................................................................................42
Fun with Writing
Writing Clearly.............................................................................................................................47
S-S-S-S-S-Secret Message................................................................................................................50
Word Snapshots............................................................................................................................51
Be Specific #1...............................................................................................................................56
Be Specific #2...............................................................................................................................57
Groans and Grins.........................................................................................................................58
Mythological Monsters.................................................................................................................59
Good, Clean Slang.......................................................................................................................60
Slang Is Here to Stay.....................................................................................................................61
Making Your Slang Dictionary Entries........................................................................................63
Say It in Slang...............................................................................................................................65
Twenty-Five Words or Less...........................................................................................................67
One Syllable Challenge................................................................................................................68
Toenails and Juice Boxes..............................................................................................................69
Ridiculous Similes........................................................................................................................70
Lessons in Writing
Be as Interesting as Possible ........................................................................................................73
The Candidate..............................................................................................................................74
Explaining Explain.......................................................................................................................75
What Is a Composition? (Teacher Instructions)..........................................................................78
What Is a Composition? (Student Instructions)..........................................................................79
Moving My Curfew.......................................................................................................................81
Moving My Curfew—Questions....................................................................................................82
I’ll Take a Cat...............................................................................................................................83
I’ll Take a Cat—Questions............................................................................................................84
Writing an Introduction...............................................................................................................85
Introduction to Plenzenarks.........................................................................................................89
Hector Hillerman’s Favorite Things.............................................................................................90
Things About Me.........................................................................................................................93
Things About Hector Hillerman..................................................................................................94
Plagiarism (Teacher Instructions).................................................................................................95
In Your Own Words.....................................................................................................................96
What Is Plagiarism?......................................................................................................................97
Parts of Speechless........................................................................................................................99
What’s That Smell—Writing with the Senses............................................................................100
Alphabet Adjectives....................................................................................................................101
Verbs Rule!..................................................................................................................................102
When Tina Saw the Tortured Can Openers.............................................................................104
The Dorpersnoodle Assignment (Teacher Instructions)...........................................................106
The Dorpersnoodle Assignment (Student Instructions)...........................................................107
Hyperbole....................................................................................................................................108
Summarizing...............................................................................................................................109
Activities for Speech
Helping Students See that Speech Habits Do Make a Difference.............................................113
With Slang /Without Slang.......................................................................................................116
Helping Students See the Power of Being Positive....................................................................118
Lessons in Grammar and Punctuation
Grammar Ideas for Teachers Who Hate Teaching Grammar...................................................121
Prepositions Are Boring Words..................................................................................................124
Activities with Adjectives............................................................................................................127
Using Quotations Marks—An Introduction..............................................................................130
The Apostrophe..........................................................................................................................133
Teaching Sentence Structure—Without Teaching a Lot of Rules..............................................137
Sentence Structure......................................................................................................................139
The Semicolon............................................................................................................................141
Impress Someone; Use a Semicolon..........................................................................................143
Practice with Semicolons............................................................................................................144
Thank Heaven for Pronouns......................................................................................................145
Activities for Different Seasons
This Year, I Hope........................................................................................................................149
September Brain Strain..............................................................................................................150
Fears............................................................................................................................................151
Not for the Squeamish...............................................................................................................153
No More Gore............................................................................................................................154
I’m Thankful for.........................................................................................................................155
Thanksgiving “T” Time..............................................................................................................156
Curing December Doldrums......................................................................................................157
Always Wear Clean Underwear.................................................................................................159
Sports Mania...............................................................................................................................160
75 Ideas for the Last Month of School......................................................................................161
Spring 100 Challenge.................................................................................................................167
Games
“Verbing” Down the Alphabet...................................................................................................171
Longer and Longer—A Letter at a Time.....................................................................................172
Vocabulary Puzzle........................................................................................................................173
Whining—“I Hate It When”.......................................................................................................174
Lipograms....................................................................................................................................176
English.........................................................................................................................................177
Did You Really Fall Into a Vat of Anchovies?............................................................................178
Using List Mania .......................................................................................................................180
List Mania...................................................................................................................................181
More List Mania.........................................................................................................................182
The Name Game........................................................................................................................183
Answer Keys and Sample Answers
Answer Keys and Sample Answers.............................................................................................185

Ideas, Ideas,
Ideas

Teacher Instructions
Homemade Bread & English Compositions
(or An Alternative to Correcting Papers)
C. M. Thurston
Let’s suppose for a minute that you are a married woman. For health and/or economic rea-
sons, you and your husband decide to bake all of your family’s bread from now on.
You buy a bread book and try a couple of loaves. They look a little lopsided and are
burned on one side, but they taste pretty good. You are pleased.
Your husband, however, becomes fascinated with the art of bread baking. He starts taking
classes, reading books, trying new recipes. After a while he knows a lot about baking bread,
and his loaves are a lot better than yours.
That’s okay with you. However, it’s not okay with him. Whenever your loaves come out of
the oven, he examines them carefully. He takes notes, giving you all kinds of helpful sugges-
tions:
• Use only stone-ground flour.
• Add a bit more water next time.
• Be more careful about the temperature of the water before you add the yeast.
• Don’t forget to check the expiration date on the yeast package.
• Knead longer.
• Place the pans further apart in the oven.
• Don’t forget to brush the tops with melted butter.
• Don’t let the loaves cool for longer than ten minutes in the pans.
As he goes over his notes, you don’t pay much attention. Perhaps a suggestion or two regis-
ters in your brain. For example, you may remember to check the expiration date on the yeast
package next time. Then again, you may not. You don’t really care much. Your husband is the
one who cares. He puts all the effort into improving your bread—analyzing, studying, criticiz-
ing, suggesting. You let him. You also pretty much ignore him.
The quality of your bread stays essentially the same.
So what does all this have to do with English compositions? In grading compositions,
many of us play the role of the bread-baking husband. We spend hours correcting every little
thing on every single paper. We do all the work—analyzing, studying and suggesting. The stu-
dents let us. All they do is look at their grades and, if we are lucky, perhaps give our comments
and notes a passing glance as they toss them into the wastebasket.
The quality of their work stays essentially the same.
Let’s face it. It is a waste of time to spend hours correcting students’ compositions, espe-
cially if you want them to become better writers. When you correct their papers for them, you
Ideas That Really Work! •Copyright © 2009 Cottonwood Press, Inc.• 800-864-4297 • www.cottonwoodpress.com
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