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 9