Thread: 9th grade English

I'm trying to come up with good warm-up/skill builder activities for the beginning of class. Soon, I will be teaching them how to write essays. I also need to teach them complements. Does anyone have any good ideas on how to teach that without boring them to death?

Hmm....I'd help, but I teach 9th graders World History, so....I really can't offer anything....but this might bump the thread a bit. Sorry. :?

Awww Lena! Part of being a student teacher is creating awesome lessons off the top of your head! C'mon now! Where's your creativity :wink:

I'm a third grade teacher so no help here but you might check into Ralph Fletchers resources--he's an awesome writing resource!

I know that I am supposed to create ideas, but is it not true that we all get ideas from each other? People are always asking for ideas on this forum. I still have the college mentality. So, I tend to want to do a lot of reading, analyzing out loud what has been read, and then writing essays, but that is not all there is to teaching English to 9th graders I'm sure.

Now I have to go back to teaching parts of speech or reviewing it, and I just don't want to do it in a way that is so boring that they'll never remember it or get it to begin with. There have got to be some veteran teachers of English on here that came up with some great engaging way to teach the more boring parts of English.

I have got no problem teaching them about theme, thesis, symbols, writing formats, etc. That's good stuff. I also teach vocabulary, and I know that it can be used as a warm-up, and SAT stuff can be used as warm-up activities as well. I also know that I can google for activities, but I want to hear from those who know what seemed to work well. I do appreciate that a couple of you replied though.

Do you have any of the Daily Skill Builders books? There's a series of them to choose from.

[url="http://www.walch.com/product/1312"]http://www.walch.com/product/1312[/url]

My coworker has these and likes them. In the past, I have had kids journal at the beginning of the period, do DOL, do skill builder worksheets, do vocabulary, etc. Any of these things work well at the start of a period if you start at the beginning of the year and sustain it - the kids get used to the routine and usually are too busy to be rowdy.

As for teaching parts of speech and such in an interesting way, there are some lesson plans that are kind of fun that you can google and find (like using Jabberwocky to talk about parts of speech), but honestly, I find that those "fun" activities are hard to sustain. To lay a solid foundation of grammar, I find I need to use a textbook that has a system laid out for me, or else I leave gaps and end up just teaching what I'm comfortable with. I'm only a fourth year teacher, though. Perhaps when I've been in the game longer, I'll be able to add more spice to my teaching of grammar. Here's hoping!

Essay structure...

[url="http://www.uwf.edu/writelab/chapter2/index.cfm"]http://www.uwf.edu/writelab/chapter2/index.cfm[/url]