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He's our bear rug.

I love Shakespeare. Have I mentioned that before? His words create magic both on the stage and in the classroom and his ideas and stories are still relevant to teenagers in 2017. Currently, TWO of my classes are reading a Shakespeare play and I'm on cloud nine. English 9 is reading Romeo and Juliet  and English 10 is reading Twelfth Night . The freshmen are a little hesitant to get into the reading but they will come around... I just know it! Meanwhile, the sophomores are all in. Today we broke down Act I, scene iii into three sections. I asked students to decide where the scenes were taking place and what the actors are doing and how they are saying their lines. Each group was given complete creative freedom. The short skits turned out better than I could have imagined. They really got into their roles and setting up the classroom into the exact scenes they wanted. In order to make sure every group member was involved, they had a student lay face down on the ground i...
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Belated Mid-year Reflection

Oofda... it's been a bit since  I have last written. While it is true that this school year seems to be flying by, it hasn't been without its share of issues. This has probably been the most trying year and I'm not quite sure why. I'm in year three; I've got some experience under my belt which is better than where I started out at the beginning of year one. However, I seem to have run into more (different) issues than I had in my previous two years. I'm not going to go into any further detail because since turning 26 last week, I have decided to let things go and to make the best out the situations that I am given... after all, if you can't roll with the punches then education probably isn't the best career choice.
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Advanced Placement Movies

It's the start of a new school year! We have only had four days of school and I already need a break. It's not great when you 5 out of 13 AP students actually completed the summer homework. I was so proud of the five students that actually put in the work... until I found out from another student not even in AP that one of the five just watched the movies all summer. The conversation went as follows: Student: "What movies did they have to watch for summer homework?" Ms. Abel: "What? They had to read books. Why would I assign people to watch movies for AP summer homework?" Student: "Oh, well *********** just watched movies for his homework." Neat.  I just had to let it go. I did give that kid a hard time but ultimately it just wasn't worth all the hassle. Other than that the beginning of the year has gone great... minus the fact that I explained its vs. it's wrong to a class full of freshmen. I'm going to blame th...
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Following Directions

Following directions... there seem to only be two extremes when it comes down to it. Either you go above and beyond what is asked of you or you completely fail. "What do those extremes look like?" you may ask. Well my friends, I am here to help you out! English 9 recently took a unit test for The Outsiders . A classic book, one of my favorites... plus it doesn't hurt when we watch the movie and one of the characters is young Rob Lowe... yum. Anyway... the final part of the test was a short answer section. The directions were simple: " answer the following questions in COMPLETE SENTENCES " . That was it. Simple enough, right? And yet... I ended up with answers that looked like this: "Sick" "A book" As far from complete sentences that you could possibly get. All I can do is shake my head and highlight where in the directions it said COMPLETE SENTENCES in ALL. CAPITAL. LETTERS. And then there is the other extreme where they fol...
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Hello... is this thing on?

English 12 just finished reading The Tempest. They liked it well enough for complaining for basically the entire book. I can handle the complaining and the whining but the next part... well that killed me just a little bit. We are in the middle... okay maybe not the middle... more like middle to end of the movie version of The Tempest  (the one with Helen Mirren... which is actually pretty good despite the fact that Russell Brand is in it) and I hear it... "Who wrote Shakespeare?" Ouch... my heart. It is a good thing that my desk is in the back of the room and it was dark because I am pretty sure that I shed some tears. I wanted to pause the movie and ask: "Really? Where have you been the last four weeks? Can you not hear me when I talk? Do you not remember the presentation I did at the beginning of the unit? Did you never look at the cover of the book? Do you want to see me cry?" But I didn't. I put my head down for a brief second while the movie pl...
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PSA: Bananagrams

Apparently kids don't like it when you win every time you play spelling/word games. They hate it so much that they will actually ask you not to play so that someone besides you can have fun. Who knew? But seriously... if you are every looking for a game that gets kids moving and tests their vocabulary, Bananagrams is probably your best bet. It also provides a lot of laughs when kids spell things wrong or try to make up words. Good thing I can still crush them while being a human spellcheck.
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Who's Afraid of the ACT?

It's getting to be that time of year... mandatory ACT testing for all juniors in the state of Wisconsin. So in an effort to prepare them a little bit more, I have dedicated the entire month of February to ACT prep in English 11, Pre-AP (which consists of one junior and four sophomores who are my little guinea pigs), and the junior half of AP Language. We are over half way done now and it's been just about the most thrilling part of my day! Yeah right. Most of the time I can keep them on track but there is always a few moments here and there where we get off subject or they are over what ever topic we are practicing that day. I just keep reminding them that this is only going to benefit them when they take the test.  The part that drives me crazy is when students will come to me outside of class and say, "Ms. Abel I am so glad that we are doing ACT prep."  Is it acceptable to grab those students by the shoulders, shake them and say, "Then why don...
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