Adventures In Room 106

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...

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.

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...