Tuesday, April 18, 2017

If the Pun Fits

Sometimes I amuse myself by giving my assignments or presentations funny titles or subtitles. Hey? What can I say? I'm an English teacher and I love word games. So, for example, the slide show on conflict was sub-captioned The Struggle is Real. Ha ha ha.

Many of my poetry challenges are similarly named: Up Close and Personification, Smile it's a Simile, Sounds like Poetry (for hyperbole), and so forth. They are not the cleverest monikers ever, but as I said, they amuse me.

My students, on the other hand, rarely get the humor. (Tweens! They are soooooo literal!) So today, when I called the activity where they were supposed to evaluate their writing and pick a piece to submit to our literary magazine Publish or Perish, some students were a little alarmed.

"Are you saying we will die if we don't do this assignment?" someone asked dramatically.

"Oh no, " I answered. "Believe me, if not doing your school work was fatal, most of you would be long dead already."

There was a pause, while my words sunk in.

"Heyyyyyyy!" 

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