How can I make my High School English Classes more fun?

Question

I teach high school English and I am looking for ways to keep my students engaged. It is an inner-city school, and many of the students struggle with proper English. Most don't want to be in the class at all.

Answer 1

I work in a large, urban high-school as well. We serve many students from the inner city; the one unit that I find works better than any other, in terms of engagement, is the lit. circle unit. Our department picked titles that students were already talking about...books for struggling readers as well as advanced readers. We use the Freedom Writer's Diary, A Thousand Splendid Suns, A Million Little Pieces, Kite Runner, The First Part Last, The Alchemist, Always Running, A Hole in My Life, Freaky Green Eyes, In Cold Blood, Girl Interrupted and the list goes on. I give book talks and allow the students to complete a webquest and then they list their top two choices. The I give students a chance to read in class for about 25 minutes each day. I have students that have never read an entire book in their lives who come to class and say "Are you gonna let us read today?" Seriously, it is amazing. You want to increase engagement, give the students choice. I also emphasize that students can read at their own pace, can change books if they read the first few chapters and realize they are no longer interested etc. I'm not sure what kind of resources your dept. has, but even if you take your students to the media center and allow then to check a sel-selected book out and then give them time in class to read. Each day i have my students write a journal entry and I give them discussion time too. This has worked really well for the teachers in our English dept. from sophomores to seniors. Ofcourse when the unit is over students complete an extension project as the assessment piece. I also have to agree that students typically get into literature if they have a chance to get up move around and act things out.

Also many of the teachers in our dept. employ Kagan structures. If oyu are not already familiar with Spencer kagan and his products you might check it out. Sometimes I cut out some of the hand gestures etc. (they're kinda corny) but overall, I have had success with it too.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

English was my favorite class in High School! I took every elective English class my HS offered.

In your situation I am not sure exactly what would help, but I can tell you what I loved about my teachers / classes and maybe you can get some ideas from that.

I loved that my English teachers were always positive.
For example I was and still am a terrible speller, but they did not harp on that so I would be stuck and not advance, they realized I did not spell well and let me grow in other areas. Also, I took some creative writing classes and such and I always felt like, how can someone grade my creativity? And they never did. I was only graded on the technical things like grammar and punctuation. Early on I would have papers come back and since they didn't like what I wrote about I would get a low grade. Not fair. Also one of my favorite classes was 'The Novel' where we would read a book and discuss what the author was trying to say to us. I never thought of books like that before and I really enjoyed the new angle. Maybe you just need to change your angle and approach and get the kids to see what you are doing differently? Maybe make an assignment of interest to the kids, such as write a fictitious story and use your favorite celebrity as the main character?

Answer 4

Fun High School Classes

Answer 5

Figure out what matters to them. As an English teacher, you know that literature provides something for every type of interest, every emotion and passion. Use that. Open the class to discussions, and find out what they consider important and interesting. Let them write about that. Find ways to apply what they care about to reading materials, and help them find it as well.

As far as proper English goes, you can develop a continuum for them, showing English that is completely unrecognizable, then something a little better, and on up to Standard English. If you discuss the importance of clarity in expressing anything, it becomes a smaller step to understanding why standard English is important.

I know teaching in inner-city schools presents unique challenges for the teacher; I hope this helps!

Answer 6

These days you can learn how to speak Spanish over the internet. Check out this online course, it's voted as the best Spanish online course of all time: http://www.rocketlearner.com/spanish The course is very easy to follow, I was able to learn Spanish in just 3 months.

I live in New York City, I wanted to go to a Spanish language teacher but that would have cost me over $800 per month. Good thing with this internet, $800 it's a lot of money for me.

Answer 7

My favorite English teacher was very animated and used classic literature to teach. It was cheaper to get our own copies and now much of it can be downloaded off the Internet for free. Try looking at Alice in Wonderland (I never knew it was so savvy until my teacher showed me) there were so many allegory's that can be brought into the present (a mark of excellent writing) he then had us write a short story in the same way using allegory. We did the same with historical records and biography - by standing on the shoulders of greatness we could all see the point so much clearer. I hope this inspires you!

Answer 8

What about small rewards for completing assignments....it's not the healthiest, but my teacher used to do little pop-quizzes, if we got it right we'd get a snicker's bar or a gatorade. Inner city kids might not be able to get those small little treats. It's the small things that make a difference. Movies also work to....followed by a class discussion.

Answer 9

Getting up out of their seats and enacting scenes is one way (especially for the kinesthetic learner). I had a fifth grade English teacher who used to line us up on opposite walls and we had to go head-to-head with another student at the board diagramming sentences. I now a lot of people have childhood traumas from diagramming sentences but I was good at it, and I was always kind of relied on by my team to win it for us. Charades is also a good game. And if you are so inclined, read to them. I had an English teacher that used toread to us with very different voices for different characters and we all loved it. I used to do the same thing when I taught drama.

Answer 10

I think most kids like games... maybe in the inner city you might play something where you have two lists on the blackboard... one is incorrect ghetto slang and the other is a correct phrase that directly corresponds ... you scramble them up and have people match the slang with the correct English...

... well... that's the first thing that comes to mind ....