I was cleaning out my photos in my phone and realized…..
I MEANT TO BLOG ABOUT THIS!!!!!
Here’s a funny moment that happened at the end of the school
year. You know those few days before the
BIG DAY - in our little world, it’s called the TCAP test.
You know those last days…..the days when you come to the conclusion
that based on review quizzes you have been giving to PROVE you have been
teaching your heart out for a full year are only proving that you obviously
showed the movie FROZEN every single
day since August. Those days when you
question WHY you are a teacher. Those
days when your students give you that hairy eyeball look that means… “If you give us one more test, one more
assessment, one more review sheet, I swear I’m going to )@%&)%&#TEGJNEY)&#)&735!!!!!!!”
You’ve all had enough.
You need this to be OVER
You need summer break. You need to stop reviewing. You need to stop stressing. You need to stop stressing the kids out. You need……………..
To review
dangling modifiers ONE MORE TIME.
So here I go. Making a PowerPoint. Making a fun little review game. Making a fun little group project. Making a fun little quiz.
Cue the hairy
eyeball look from the “I’m sick of the cute stuff” group.
So, we are working, working, working. I’m cheerfully encouraging the little angels
to find the dangling modifier, find the split infinitive, find the misplaced
prepositional phrase, find the….. find the….. find the…..
When I hear THE VOICE. The voice that you’ve grown to love to
hear. The voice that always has the right
answers. The voice that you don’t call
on very often because you know THEY got it the first time you said it. The voice that belongs to the girl whose life
will end if her average drops below a 100% in ALL classes. The voice of reason. The voice of knowledge. The voice of HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The voice that says AT THE END OF THE
STINKING 8TH GRADE YEAR,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
“So a dangling modifier,
like, it’s, like, a BAD thing, right?
SO, like, we are looking for the, like, BAD sentence, right? I mean, like, something called a, like,
Dangling Participle is a BAD thing, like, right?”
Pardon my use of a foreign language here
that is never used by a teacher ANYWHERE….
HOLY SHIT
So apparently, we just had an AHA moment in
which the teacher discovered that these kids made it to the end of 8th
grade without the understanding that
YES, Virginia!!!!! A DANGLING MODIFIER IS A BAD THING SO PICK
THE SENTENCE WITH THE BOO-BOO, you sweet little muffin of
knowledge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cue - two bottles of wine that night instead of the standard
one plus the added bonus for my husband of crying on his shoulder an additional
hour on top of the standard one hour.
Now, to the picture. Our phenomenal gym teacher decided for each
grade level to make posters to hang in the gym the week before tests. Posters of encouragement or phrases we use to
remember stuff or formulas that needed to be drilled and killed. Your standard everyday offering to the
testing gods via poster and markers. We
decided that one of our motivational pictures on our ELA poster must be in
reference to the “Dangling Modifier is, like, a Bad Thing, like, right?” moment
that almost took Mrs. Hensley’s life. So
my artist and his helper (aka the two boys who would do anything to skip
related arts) decided to draw a cat named Modifier hanging dead in a tree.
Cue - the emotional 14 year old girl who immediately
bursts into tears and cannot be consoled until the……
Cat is changed to a cute little feline
named Modifier who is simply dangling from a tree.
Which is a, like, a bad thing, like,
right?
