Mad libs

I was substituting for high school English today and the way things have been going I really expected to be watching another movie.

But the teacher actually had some work for them to do and I had work to do with them on not using vague terms in their writing.  (Then while they did their two writing assignments I read my book. – Hubby thinks all I do with this job is watch movies and pleasure read.)

The assignment I did with them was a paragraph with some words underlined and they were suppose to (out loud as a class) change the words.  Here’s part of it:

A few hundred workers labored steadily on the castle, despite a disease and famine, until many years later.  The walls of the castle, several feet thick, enclose many acres.  The central tower alone, which is many feet high, is constructed of numerous stones.  It generally took a stonemason quite a few hours to cut and position each stone.  The castle is situated in the bend of a waterway, which is very wide…..

In explaining the idea, I compared them to doing Mad Libs – only to have about half of each class give me a blank look like they had no idea what those were.

I did this in 4 classes and noticed a few things.

All told there were about 25 blanks to be filled in and when we started it was like pulling teeth to get the kids to speak up and offer something.  By the time we got to the last blank – It cost a bundle. – the class had warmed up and I was getting silly answers suggested (which was what I wanted.)

And when we went back through and read our new paragraph out loud most of them were laughing.

Of the 4 classes, 3 of them were the basic track (may go to a 4 year college) and only one was the ‘A’ track (WILL be going to a 4 year college.)  But when it came to giving answers the basic track kids were much more imaginative with their answers.

We had the enclosure being 1000s of acres large and the tower being only 1/2 ft. tall and the like.  The ‘A’ kids gave much more realistic answers.

I did find it interesting that while we live on the Wabash River, when it came to waterways the four answers were the Thames (the ‘A’ class), the Mississippi, and the Rio Grande (twice).  All I can figure is that since this was 11th graders who are also studying American History, they must have been working on Texas.

I did get one surprise when I checked into the school.

Each teacher gets one planning period as well as their lunch time.  As a sub, I might be assigned to another room during that planning period or encouraged (this usually occurs if the planning period is the last period of the day and you stop in to see if you can leave early – and it’s usually a little stronger than encouraged) to help do some filing in one of the offices.

If they don’t tell you that something needs to be done then you can hang out in the classroom (if empty) or the teacher’s lounge.  (Which is painful when it’s computers on turned on because subs aren’t allowed on the computers on threat of job loss.)

I usually opt for the classroom and put my feet up and read.

Today I was informed that all subs MUST report to the lounge during planning periods so they can be found. It appears that someone(s) has been disappearing during their planning periods and the school secretary got tired of not being able to find them.

I’m hoping that this rule fades away VERY quickly.