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Wrapping Up

For the past month, I've been completely obsessed with this whole house thing. Should I put in an offer? How much? What's wrong with the house? yadda, yadda, yadda. Even I felt it was getting tiresome. Right now it's in a holding position - I recinded the offer after the inspection revealed that a new roof was needed immediately, along with some signficant foundation work. Let me just say that 1. Inspections are wholly worth the money and 2. Cheap and easy is never a good option when it comes to your house.

Meanwhile, my students have had somewhat of a break. I've been reading A Christmas Carol to the sophomores. There's just no other way to do it. I let one period partner read for a small sections and summarize what they had read - it quickly revealed that although it was read, it was not understood. Reading aloud as a whole group is painful at best - pronounciation is difficult. They need to have someone ask questions every 5 minutes while reading to make sure they're on track. Sadly, the vocabulary is just too far beyond a majority of them... usually a reader can figure out the meaning if one word isn't understood, but when it's roughly half of the page, it takes more effort than they're willing to put out. Even during exercises where they had to figure out the meaning of one word from context, most had to resort to pulling out a dictionary. I still don't get how one cannot figure out the meaning of "jocund boys" when The sentence immediately prior just described "jolly" and "merry" children. Although I love the story and the author, I'm thinking I might just abandon it next year. I'm not sure if I'm actually achieving something with the students. It seems like they're just along for the ride, at times.

Then again, another teacher has decided to do The Man in the Iron Mask. It starts with an entire chapter describing the kings clothes. Vital to the plot, mind-numbingly boring... plus there's all the name jokes.

Comments

Jenna said…
I do show the movie... but not until the very end of the unit - after the final test, essay or other assignment. This gives me fewer answers regarding the sexual relationship of "Montag" and "Clarisse" (Fahrenheit 451 movie), descriptions of "Curly is a Mexican" (Of Mice and Men movie), etc.

If they want to watch the movie instead of reading the book, they can watch it at home. Shockingly, most are too lazy to actually do that and muddle along in classroom readings.
7:07 PM
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