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Just Around the Corner

Nine days left for Seniors! This year I finally remembered that I don't like grading final papers or extensive projects that require a lot of reading. It's only taken five years, but I did learn! Instead, my sophomores are creating newspapers devoted to Julius Casear. News articles are short and easy to read. Also, those who are creative (or desperately need an A) can be quite entertaining and fun to read. I've done this project before with Romeo and Juliet - some of the want-ads the students came up with were quite amusing and showed that they had picked up more details that I had thought.
 
AP Language students are creating games based on Catcher in the Rye. This is a class that will be very creative. Previously, I had done this with the Crucible and ended up with a CandyLand version of the going through the play, complete with "evil fungal bread" trying to over power "Wonder Bread" and cards that stopped players for a turn by saying that they had asked for "more weight". There was also a version of Guess Who? called "Who Be A Witch?" that was quite entertaining to watch.
 
AP Literature students will be creating MySpace pages for characters in Much Ado About Nothing. Poor Margaret is going end up with a slightly dim personality and many dirty jokes. I still haven't heard what Beatrice's play list will be, but Don John's will be comprised of screamer metal. I just hope I don't have to listen to it.
 
This morning I handed out the summer assignment to the incoming AP students. After explaining it all, I asked for questions. One student raised his hand - "you have to read during the summer?" When I nodded, thinking to myself.. 'I'm pretty sure I just went over that', he shook his head and handed the paper back to me. The girl next to him exclaimed "no fricken' way" and handed hers too me as well. Luckily it didn't spark a protest wherein they all handed them back. Although I told them that if they didn't want to do it, it's not big whoop, but this year with all the budget cuts it could get hairy. I was asked about removing the summer assignment (our ONLY gatekeeper for AP) to get more students into the classes.  That would be the wrong move in my opinion - another AP class in the humanities does not have a summer assignment and several students fail and bail at the end of fall semester. That class gets smaller and the regular courses get overloaded with the bailers. Sadly, all the english courses will be too overloaded next year to allow any student to bail, resulting in more failures or students not being able to pass the AP test because everything has to move so slow for the slackers.

Comments

R2P2 said…
Your stories of newspapers inspire me to give a full-blown version of the assignment next year! Sounds way fun! I had mine do it as a side-assignment (jury did it in prep for a mock trial) but not a full paper...those want-ads sound like they could be really funny!

And those students wanting AP but not to read!! My jaw dropped. That is ridiculous. I'm annoyed enough that at my school summer reading for honors is optional. This is ridiculous. Stay strong!
5:21 PM
bun2bon said…
I've been following your blog for a couple months now, and enjoy your writing.

Come by and visit mine if you like:
http://thischildleftbehind.blogspot.com/
5:36 PM
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