The Week Before Break

One of the benefits of teaching at a private school is that we sometimes get more time off for holiday breaks.  This is the last week of instruction before our 2 week Spring Break which everyone needs and deserves.  But, there are a few things that need to be considered when we do not see our students for two weeks. 

Here are some of them:

 

 

1.   They will think every day this week is the day before break.  Monday will feel like Friday.  Tuesday will feel like Friday.  Wednesday will feel like Friday.  Thursday will feel like Friday.  And Friday will feel like, well, better than Friday. 

 

2.   Students will be in state of incredulous wonder in every class where a teacher is still instructing and working through the curriculum. 

3.   Teachers will want to get any important tests, projects, etc. done before the break to avoid any gaps in learning the material. 

4.   If you add #2 and #3 together, you get teachers vigorously trying to finalize parts of their curriculum and students who either joining them in the fight or looking like cartoon figures with two question marks instead of eyes. 

5.   There will be countdowns.  Teachers will be doing the counting down more than students. 

6.   Teachers will need to decide what to assign for homework over this long break.  There are two schools of thought on this.  The first is to let break be break and let students spend time with their families without the stress of homework.  The second is to assign something that they can actually get done because they might have some time on their hands.  I do assign homework (reading or an essay) but it is not due the day they get back.  It is usually due 2-3 days after, so students can choose whether they would like a homework free break or to get it done when they have some extra time to do it. 

7.   Not only will the classrooms feel different this week, so will the hallways, the
    cafeteria, and the library.

The week before break is a certainly a special week in the school year.  In order to get to our long break, we will embrace what will be a long and crazy week.   And this year, when we get back to school after break, we will have about 2 months before summer break.  So, there will be more even more counting down.    

 

One of my favorite activities to do with my Sophomores is called Vocabulary Challenge.  The have to choose from 50-75 vocabulary words and create a story that makes sense and shows that know the meaning of the word and can use it appropriately. 


So for instance: 

     This will not receive credit:  The girl show a great deal of apathy.

     This will: By constantly rolling her eyes and sighing loudly, the girl   
     clearly expressed apathy at her mom’s lecture. 

We do this challenge once a marking and students can earn Extra Credit for using more words (and we all know how much they love Extra Credit).  I tell the students to feel free to use sports, cartoon characters, movie figures, etc. to make their story interesting.  Because of media and it being an election year, several students have even tackled satirizing politicians for their stories!

The creativity and the humor in some of these stories is the best part of it for me when I am grading them.  However, they are also upping their vocabulary game manipulating such words as charlatan, pernicious, pusillanimous, adulation, sycophant, grandiloquent, harangue, galvanize, juggernaut, just to name a few, into their stories.  (You can now also see how they can have fun in the political spectrum with these words!)  I have to place a 1 page maximum on the story or some of them would write 2-3 pages. 

Vocabulary instruction and assessment is predominantly memorization, even when we know that our goal is building.  And, we know the students making flashcards and quizlets…we tell them to!  This activity takes the assessment a step beyond memorization and it is one of the activities my students anticipate and really enjoy doing.  After I read them all, I compile a list of all of their story topics and then read 2-3 really creative or funny ones to the class. 

Here is a list of some of the story topics that they have fun writing:

o   the 1985 Celtics vs. the current Golden State Warriors

o   a noxious gas actually coming from a culinary school improperly disposing of eggs

o   a farmer trying to win the annual pumpkin competition

o   a charlatan trying to pull off a hoax on a genial couple

o   a restaurant date ending in an altercation

o   a boy who loves the WWE, but his mom thinks it is a fallacy

o   a myriad of people trying to get the new iphone

o   a letter to 007 about planting a bomb in a clandestine location

o   a yachting trip the faces a formidable storm

As you can see, they are very creative with their topics!