Today in class, we read some Mark Twain and talked about exaggeration. We talked about exapmples of exaggeration from the story, then for fun, I asked them to write a paragraph using exaggeration to describe their experience with this week’s snow storm.
To inspire their young minds, I showed them a Facebook post from my friend Brian:
Brian McMurray
Survival Log: Day 2 - Things are beginning to degrade. The snow has piled up past the garage doors making travel difficult. I have removed the tires from the car and shredded them to fashion a series of digging tools. Was also able to duct tape a fork to a pool cue and create a makeshift harpoon, which I immediately used to harpoon the neighbor’s cat. Poor guy never saw it coming but at least now we're eating.
These were some of the paragraphs my gems came up with... clearly we still have some work to do...
"I was so bored during the snow storm, I thought I was dead."
"On our snow day it was so bad. The snow drift piled up to the sky. The wind was so cold that when old ladies go outside, they swear up and down they see polar bears."
"There was so much snow I couldn’t see outside. We were out of food so we had to eat snow. I died of the ultimate brain freeze."
"On Tuesday, Des Moines Schools got out of school early because there was snow up to our eyes. We had a hard time getting home. There were 1,000 car accidents in 15 minutes. It was OUTRAGEOUS!"
"On Tuesday was a bad day because it was alot of snow. It was really coold outside. We whent home urly. It was exaggeration to be home and I didn’t know what to do."
"The snow was so white and deep it would go past your head. This big bad blizzard happened on Wednesday. Oh jeez it was BIG! The wind would blow you away all the way to Mexico."
"Yesterday during the blizzard we didn’t go anywhere cuz we couldn’t get out the door. My mom suggested we clean the house. We really had no choice cuz my mom was a force to be reckoned with. That was the worst day of my life. School would of bin better."
It was exaggeration to be home. That one might need to hear the definition again :)
ReplyDeleteWho said facebook was a waste of time? You got a lesson plan out of it!
My favorite was the student who asked, "What snow storm?"
ReplyDeleteYep. Sounds about right.
ReplyDeleteHow is it that the last kid spelled "reckoned" correctly, but failed to use the correct form of "been"? Aww, kids today.
becoming-ann - My thoughts exactly. I had to read it twice to make sure my eyes were working correctly.
ReplyDeleteOutrageous in all caps is my favorite, because the exclamtion point wasnt emphasis enough.
ReplyDeleteI can't comment on the spelling because I still misspell basic words. Maybe I need to go back to the 8th grade.
Hi. My name is Tony. Your friend Diana in California told me about your blog. I'm a junior high language arts teacher, too, so I thought I could follow you to see if you have some of the same experiences that I do.
ReplyDeleteIf you're interested, I have a blog, too, though my posts are often on other topics. It's found at
http://niemoller1979.blogspot.com/
Anyway, I look forward to reading some of your posts in the future. I know that teaching twelve, thirteen, and fourteen year-olds can lead to some unexpected experiences.
Hilarious. My favorite: "It was OUTRAGEOUS!" followed closely by "It was an exaggeration to be home."
ReplyDelete