Conversation Starters for Parents and Students

One of the most important things that parents can do to ensure their kids are getting the most out of their education is simple — talk to them about what they're learning!

If, as a parent, you're at a loss for how to talk to your child about assignments, or if you're a teacher who could use a few prompts to pass onto your students parents, here is a great list of conversation starters to really get kids thinking about what they're learning.

General Conversation Questions for All Assignments

• Why do you suppose your teacher assigned this?


• What skills or content are you practicing in this assignment?


• How close to mastery of these skills or this content do you think you are?


• What challenges, if any, are you having?


• What can you do to overcome these challenges?


• What can I do to help you overcome these challenges?


• What can your teacher do to help you overcome these challenges?


• Is this assignment for a grade or for practice?


• If for a grade, what grade do you think you should receive for it? Why?

Specific Conversation Questions for Writing Assignments

• What type of writing were you assigned?


• What is your main point or idea?


• How have you tried to develop this idea?


• Who is your audience?


• What have you done specifically to address this audience’s needs?


• With what part of this piece are you most satisfied? Why?


• With what part of this piece are you least satisfied? Why?


• Was this writing assigned for a grade or for practice?


• If for a grade, what grade do you think you should receive for it? Why?

Tuesday Trivia

1. The infamous phrase “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” featured in the feature film,The Shining, is also found in which work of Irish literature?


2. What do the initials stand for in the following author’s names: A.A. Milne, J.M. Barrie, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, D.H. Lawrence, H.G. Wells, J.D. Salinger


3. What child movie actress brought a libel suit against British author, Graham Greene?


4. From Here To Eternity author James Jones' wife, Gloria, once worked in Hollywood as a stand-in for what actress?


5. Which author kept a bear in his dorm room at Cambridge?

Last Week’s Answers

French was the official language of which country for over 600 years?

After the Norman conquest of England in 1066 AD., French was the official language of the gentry and educated.

Which author based his most famous characters on the fascinating case of William Brodie, respected Edinburgh businessman by day, leader of a gang of thieves by night?

Robert Louis Stevenson was inspired by Brodie’s dual nature and created his character(s) Dr. Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde.

'Excuse my dust' was the requested epitaph of which irreverent authors?

Although it was not actually used, Dorothy Parker requested this epitaph.

Which great author received the meager sum of 10 pounds for his greatest work of literature?

John Milton sold the publishing rights to his epic verse work Paradise Lost to a Samuel Simmons in 1667 for only ten pounds.

Edgar Allan Poe was expelled from West Point after wearing what to a public parade?

In 1831 at the age of 21 when he arrived nearly naked for a military parade (wearing nothing but kid gloves and a white belt), he was looking for a way to get expelled from the school. He was in fact expelled for 'gross neglect of duty' soon after pulling his legendary feat.

Plain English: Who Can Be Blamed for All the Poor Spelling?

Why can’t some people spell? Lousy spellers may have undiagnosed learning disabilities such as dyslexia. Others may not have been taught the basic rules of spelling. The main excuse, however, is simply that there is not much emphasis on spelling these days. The stigma of being a poor speller has been minimized thanks to advertising. We see “light” spelled as “lite”, and night spelled as “nite.” Spelling corruptions become brand identification jokes like “Duck Tape”, a kind of duct tape. Then there is the cutesy spelling as in Kountry Kafe, or the Weigh of Life Clinic. Creative spelling got the upper hand once parents embraced the right to spell their child’s name any way they wanted. Katy, Katie, Kati, Katee, and K.T. are all pronounced the same. So are Joany, Jonie, Jonee, and Joni.

Text messaging and email also contribute to the demise of spelling. Playing around with language and keyboard symbols defines electronic communication. In cyberspace we are forever young, writing like teens. Just take the spelling from those inscriptions in your high school yearbook (love ya, luv, cuz, wanna, gonna, gotta, or gotcha), add a few :-), :-/, and some IMO, BTW, BFF, LOL, and you’re speaking online lingo.

At the root of the problem is the fact that English is a really tough language as far as spelling goes. English has 90 basic spelling patterns. 84 of the 90 patterns have exceptions. In other words, groups of letters form the same sound, but are spelled differently. Examples: cat/plait; pet/threat; mum/some/country; seen/lean/thief; awl/all; play/they/weigh/matinee; daddy/monkey/coffee; sight/site/cite; meet/meat/mete.

English was not difficult in the beginning because it followed the regularity of Latin. The problems with English began when French became the official language of England during the 200-year Norman occupation that started in 1066. Imposing French on English formed a whole new language – a kind of Frenglish. English was further complicated from 1476 on by printers who got paid by the line of type. To make more money, they doubled the consonants in the middle of words, especially f, g, l, m, n, r, s, and t, and the vowels e and o. They also inserted letters, many of them silent, at the beginning and end of word (olde shoppe). Greed corrupted English spelling over 500 years ago, and it hasn’t changed much since 1755.

Do other countries have the same problems with their languages? Yes, but unlike English-speaking countries they do something about it. Writing reforms in other languages have taken place in at least 21 countries since 1900. Recent reforms were made in Chinese (1956), Danish (1999), Dutch (1995), Finnish (1999), French (1990), German (1998), Italian (1996), Japanese (1995), Portuguese (1997). Some reform in America in spellings such as “theater” instead of the British “theatre” and “gray” instead of “grey” were adopted around 1900. Otherwise, both the English and Americans are stuck with two/to/too, threw/through, lie/lye, see/sea, they’re/their/there, and many other words that are pronounced the same, but spelled differently.

The Simplified Spelling Society, an organization in England that advocates language reform, makes the following claim: “Italian children can spell accurately after just two years at school. Italy has only half as many identified dyslexics as England. Even after 11 years at school, barely half of all English speakers become confident spellers.”

At last we have an answer to why Americans can’t spell. It’s not us, it’s our language. The Simplified Spelling Society would make us all better spellers by eliminating the exceptions to the spelling rules. In the future, we may have no trouble whatsoever spelling and reading the sentence: “There parking there car over there.” Most people, according to The Simplified Spelling Society, write the sentence like that already.

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Mary Jane McKinney is the creator and owner of Grammardog.com LLC, publisher of grammar, style, and proofreading exercises that use sentences from literature. She is a former high school English teacher and dedicated grammarian whose column Plain English appears in several Texas newspapers. Grammardog.com LLC, P.O. Box 299, Christoval, TX 76935, www.grammardog.com, 325-896-2479, fifi@grammardog.com.

Check out PrestwickHouse.com for the full line of Grammardog products and Downloadable Grammardog Products.

How Broadband and Technology Enhance the English Language Arts Classroom

This post is a guest spot and is syndicated from Broadband for America's blog. Visit their website to find out more about their initiative to make broadband access to the internet available to every household in the nation; to provide data transfer speeds to make that broadband experience valuable to users; and to provide the bandwidth necessary for content providers to continue to make the internet a cultural, societal, and economic engine for growth.

You can view the original posting here.

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With high tech gadgetry becoming increasingly ubiquitous in the work and play of even our youngest students, it only makes sense that the presence of communications and production technology in the typical classroom should expand as well.

Whether you’re watching TV and Ellen Paige is proclaiming her amazement at an American class’s interaction with a class in Japan via Cisco’s newest classroom product, or you’re reading in an online article that schools in the Southern US are receiving millions in technology grants, or you’re debating with your child’s PTA about the best way to raise money for new classroom computers — it seems that folks everywhere are talking about how teachers and students use technology.

On social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, the English Companion Ning, and We Are Teachers, all sorts of educators from novices to the most seasoned literature professors are chatting about how to use technology effectively in the classroom. At the recent National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention in Philly, I was lucky enough to meet with a group of English Companion Ning teachers who had come together “IRL” (in real life) to talk about the best ways support new teachers using their social networking site.

Over the past few years, even the most traditional classrooms have become high tech. Teachers have always been leaders in the technology revolution and are now even more so the forerunners in exposing their students to new and creative ways of learning. Even with severe budget cuts during the past few years’ economic decline, teachers have become more ingenuitive in their approach to helping students learn.

It’s no secret that the current generation of students was born into a world far more technologically advanced than were their parents or most of their teachers. Kids crave interactivity and respond well to technology that allows them to form friendships all over the world and maintain a level of contact that used to be reserved for next-door neighbors. Kids no longer only read books or watch movies; they interact with authors, actors, and producers. They not only consume the news, they text, tweet, and e-mail their opinions and actually help to shape the news.

Just as passivity is passé in the “outside world,” so too has the sun set on the day of “drill and kill” and the passive “lecture-listen lesson.” With products like SMARTBoard™, traditional presentations that require kids to do nothing but sit like sponges and soak it all in are transformed into opportunities for students to manipulate information—drag punctuation into place, rearrange sentences, reveal answers—and forge their own knowledge.

Kids who would otherwise need to review a lesson multiple times to retain information gain a whole new level of engagement with tools that allow (and even encourage) group learning; the presentation creates a center of focus and prompts students to think together and complete exercises together. When they’re not actively working with the board, students benefit by watching, critiquing, and correcting the process as it happens.

In our visual, point-and-click culture, high-tech teaching tools capture attention, create a tactile engagement from abstract material, and encourage involvement. In short, new, interactive presentation software and hardware turn ideas nto substance. tudents are motivated to participate, changed from audience into learners.Teaching is translated too, as every lesson and assessment you write can be infinitely customized to suit your and your students’ preferences. Your only limit is your own imagination, and so much of the software and resources available on the web are absolutely free for the taking!


Free sites like Quizlet offer teachers an assortment of interactive activities for students to learn vocabulary through practice tests and games. Free software like Adobe Acrobat and PowerPoint allow teachers to use either self-created presentations or title-specific materials from companies like Prestwick House. Teachers can enhance and drive home vocabulary or grammar lessons, enhance writing and editing skills, or pique student interest in a new book. Freedom and versatility are the keys.

Whether your tool of choice is a downloadable PDF version of your favorite teaching guide, an enhanced presentation, or an ebook for your Kindle, never has there been such a vast array of materials and strategies available at such low cost and such high convenience.

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Annie Rizzuto is a copywriter and social networking advocate for Prestwick House Publishing in Smyrna, DE. A recent graduate of University of Delaware’s Business and Technical Writing program, Annie is thrilled to be part of a company with a focus on helping English teachers. Read more of her writing at www.prestwickhouse.blogspot.com.

Step Outside of the Classroom

Most literature-o-philes and educators would name Dead Poets Society as one of their top movie picks. What did Robin Williams do that was so brilliant?


He had his students step out of the classroom for their learning.

Although, this movie was made in the 1990s, many students rarely step outside of their classrooms—with the exception of going on field trips. However, with budget cuts, field trips are usually one of the first expenses eliminated. This is a tragedy when you consider students that spend a good portion of their lives in school.

Why is a change in environment a brilliant idea?

When students figure out that they can learn from a portrait in a school's hallway, then the teacher has given them the gift of knowing that people can learn anywhere! The teacher has sparked their curiosity so that the students see the objects around them as having learning potential. In this way, the teacher has just helped the student carry the learning beyond the walls of the classroom and potentially outside the walls of the school. Just a simple act has created students who learn continuously in any kind of setting.

Moreover, students and teachers both need fresh air or a change in scenery to boost their creative juices. Often student behavior can be managed by having students get out of their desks and physically move. Moving outside the classroom for educational purposes may also appeal to different learning styles. Students will have the ability to use their other senses to learn.

Some lesson ideas include...

• Round robin discussions — Students sit in small groups on the ground or on picnic benches and discuss a topic; one student keeps a record of the discussion. The class will then come together, with each group reporting its findings.


• Make videos—One of my high school student's favorite lessons was recreating television commercials. First, each student group chose a commercial and analyzed the stereotypes or misconceptions in the commercial. Then the students tried to recreate the same commercial without the stereotypes or misconceptions.


• Go on a scavenger hunt — Students can look for objects of a certain color, texture, and so forth. If you want to add a digital aspect, have them record certain sounds, and then have other students hunt for these sounds. Have the students take close-up pictures of objects and have others hunt for the object.


• Do a field study — I've had elementary students hunt for fossils with a paleontologist, collect and analyze weather data with a meteorologist, and explore the microbes in a nearby river with a water engineer. A majority of these activities required only a phone call, and we even walked to some of the events. In Germany, school groups walk to several places or take public transportation, which lowers the cost to make more field trips possible.


• Journal — Students can simply listen to the sounds around them and describe the experience in a journal, or each one can pick a place to sit and compose a poem, create a comic, or draw.
  

When you step outside your classroom your students will....

• Get more physical activity, which promotes physical and mental well-being
• Look forward to your classes
• Learn to think outside the box, which will definitely help them in their future careers
• Continue with these ideas outside of school and choose outside activities instead of staying inside and watching television.

What are some interesting ways you have taught “outside your classroom”?


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Special thanks to guest blogger, Shelly Terrell, for her contribution to the Prestwick Cafe Blog.

Shelly Sanchez Terrell is a technology teacher trainer, English language teacher, and consultant for various language institutes, online schools, and educational institutes in Nepal, the US, Germany, and Italy. Explore her Teacher Reboot Camp Blog for tips on professional development and integrating technology effectively into the classroom. She can be reached via Twitter, @shellterrell.

Tuesday Trivia

1. French was the official language of which country for over 600 years?
2. Which author based his most famous characters on the fascinating case of William Brodie — respected Edinburgh businessman by day, leader of a gang of thieves by night?
3. 'Excuse my dust' was the requested epitaph of which irreverent author?
4. Which great author received the meager sum of 10 pounds for his greatest work of literature?
5. Edgar Allan Poe was expelled from West Point after wearing what to a public parade?

Last Week's Answers


Which was Shakespeare’s first play?

William Shakespeare wrote his first play The Taming of the Shrew in 1593.


When was punctuation invented?

There was no punctuation until the 15th century.


Hamlet--with 1,530 lines--is the longest speaking part in all of Shakespeare's plays. What is the second longest?

Richard III, with 1,164 lines.


Johannes Gutenberg is often credited as the inventor of the printing press in 1454, but what culture discovered, used, and discarded this method long before Gutenberg’s invention?

The Chinese actually printed from movable type in 1040 but later discarding the method.


The first history book, the Great Universal History, was published by Rashid-Eddin of Persia. In what year was it published?

In 1311.

Can you name the most commonly used words in the English language?

Jason came across this fun, challenging game and it quickly became an office hit — so we're pretty sure your students and coworkers will get a kick out of it as well. We were all pretty sure we could do it with no problem, but around the office there was varying success as you can see below.

Once you begin the game, you have 12 minutes to come up with as many of the 100 most commonly used words in the English Language according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Try it out yourself here!




Doug
Score: 57





Annie
Score:74





Stephanie
Score:69





Keith
Score:61





Elizabeth
Score:68





Derek
Score: 64

Tuesday Trivia

1. Which was Shakespeare’s first play?
2. When was punctuation invented?
3. Hamlet--with 1,530 lines--is the longest speaking part in all of Shakespeare's plays. What is the second longest?
4. Johannes Gutenberg is often credited as the inventor of the printing press in 1454, but what culture discovered, used, and discarded this method long before Gutenberg’s invention?
5. The first history book, the Great Universal History, was published by Rashid-Eddin of Persia. In what year was it published?

Last Week's Answers

Where does the “Old King Cole” nursery rhyme come from?

This rhyme is based on a real king and historical event. King Cole is an actual monarch of Britain who ruled around 200 A.D.


Which book did Dr. Suess write on a dare?

Dr. Seuss wrote "Green Eggs and Ham" after his editor dared him to write a book using fewer than 50 different words.


Ghosts appear in how many of Shakespeare’s plays?

Ghosts appear in 4 Shakespearian plays; Julius Caesar, Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth.


What is the shortest complete sentence in the English language?

“Go," is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.


Where does the phrase “often a bridesmaid, never a bride” come from?

The phrase "Often a bridesmaid, but never a bride," actually originates from an advertisement for Listerine mouthwash from 1924.

Walter Dean Myers at NCTE 2009

— Jason Scott

The 2009 NTCE conference in Philadelphia was a great one for Prestwick House. In addition to being in nearby Philadelphia (hooray for no air travel!), it was chock-a-block full of interesting teachers and writers who stopped by our booth to chat.

Case in point, young adult author Walter Dean Myers stopped by our booth to say hello. Being a fan, I asked him to sign our catalogue which he graciously did. The whole experience has me wondering who we might bump into next year’s NTCE conference in Disney World.

I’m hoping that it will be the most literary of all the Disney characters (and the character who still moves the most Disney merchandise) Winnie the Pooh.

FINALLY SOLVED: The Mystery of Pygmalion’s Missing Scene!

by Douglas Grudzina

You know those stories that are so ubiquitous, so culturally iconic, that everyone thinks he or she “knows” it?

You know how some people can get really bent out of shape when their belief that the version of the tale they know is not necessarily the original or the definitive version is challenged—when someone dares to suggest that what they “know” about the story is simply inaccurate?

A week or so ago, we did a post on the universality and limitless adaptability of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

Today, let’s examine the strange case of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. At least three times a year (quite possibly more), we receive a letter, e-mail, or telephone call inquiring about a “defect” in our Prestwick House Touchstone Literary Classic edition of Pygmalion. The inquiry is always the same: a crucial scene is missing from our edition, specifically, the scene in which Colonel Pickering and Professor Higgins take the flower-girl-turned-Princess Eliza Doolittle to the ball.

Most of the calls we receive are from genuinely concerned customers—either concerned that they purchased a defective product, or that we may have received a defective product from our printer, who somehow omitted full pages from the manuscript.

First, a word about the texts of our Touchstone Literary Classics (and probably more than you ever needed or wanted to know about the history of international copyright in the bargain). Back in the day—I think 1926 is the pivotal year, but don’t quote me—copyright laws were very different from today’s. Most things written and printed in the world prior to that year—it might be 1923, but I really think it’s 1926—have fallen into the “public domain.”

(Not everything, but most things.)

“Public domain” means that no one person or entity owns the copyright. Shakespeare is in the public domain. So is Dickens. So are Twain, James Fenimore Cooper, and Nathaniel Hawthorne—and so are some of George Bernard Shaw’s works. All of our Literary Touchstone Classics are public domain works. (We can sell them to you so inexpensively because we do not have to pay royalties on the work.)

Now, added material, like introductions, prefaces, footnotes and endnotes, study guide questions, etc., can all be copyrighted; and Prestwick House, of course, owns all of the material included in the Touchstones.


NOW HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT ENIGMATIC MISSING SCENE:


Pygmalion was originally a play written for the stage by George Bernard Shaw in 1913. It was a typical five-act play: Act I taking place in the street outside of Covent Garden Theater; Act II taking place in the library of Henry Higgins’s home on Wimpole Street. Act III takes place in the drawing room of Higgins’s mother at her at-home. Act IV returns to Higgins’s home, and Act V returns to Mrs. Higgins’s drawing room. There are, in all, three sets: the London street, Higgins’s library, and Mrs. Higgins’s drawing room.


The action of the play ends with everyone leaving Mrs. Higgins’s house to go to Mr. Doolittle’s wedding. Higgins balks at going, and Eliza says something to him along the lines of: “Good-bye, Professor Higgins, I shall not be seeing you again.” Higgins curses, she leaves, and the final curtain falls. [Applause]

This 1913 stage play is the version reproduced in the Prestwick House Literary Touchstone. (Since it was published before 1926, it exists in the public domain.)

Theater audiences and critics complained about the “ambiguous” ending of this play and the apparent lack of a “happy ending,” so Shaw wrote an epilogue, which is included in the Touchstone edition. In this epilogue, Shaw narrates the events of the years following the close of the play. Eliza marries Freddy. He drops the “Eynsford” from his name and—with financial assistance from Colonel Pickering—opens a green-grocer shop. Eliza, also with Pickering’s help, opens a florist shop next door to Freddy. The couple remains close friends with the Colonel and Higgins, neither of whom ever marry.


In 1938 (after that key 1926 copyright date), Shaw adapted his stage play for the screen. This film version of Pygmalion starred Leslie Howard as Higgins and Wendy Hiller as Eliza. There are several notable differences between the 1913 stage play and the 1938 screenplay. While the stage play has a decidedly Victorian flavor, the screen play is definitely twentieth-century. Whereas in the stage play, Higgins and Pickering intend to take Eliza to an ambassador’s garden party, in the screenplay, they take her to an embassy ball.


The movie also depicts the scene of Eliza’s triumph at the ball, which the play does not. To do so in the play would have required an additional set change, costume changes, and a host of “stage extras,” all of which Shaw and his producer apparently deemed unnecessary.


Probably the most significant difference between the 1913 stage play and the 1938 screen play, however, is the ending. Shaw’s epilogue must not have satisfied the public because, at the end of the 1938 movie, Eliza returns to Higgins.


It’s kind of funny that, during my 25+ years teaching British literature to high school seniors, most of the anthologies I used included the full text of Pygmalion—the 1913 stage version, with Epilogue. The text was then peppered with stills from the 1938 film! (Talk about confusing the poor student!)

It is the 1938 screenplay that served as the basis for the 1956 stage musical and the 1964 movie musical, My Fair Lady. Again, however, there were significant changes. The visit to Mrs. Higgins’s home in Act III becomes a visit to the Ascot Racecourse. The role of Eliza’s father and his marriage in Act V are greatly expanded. How Eliza spends the night after the embassy ball is expanded, and so on.


Those, therefore, who call and write to wonder about the absence of a “party scene” in Shaw’s original (1913) play are probably more familiar with the 1938 movie (or the 1964 screen musical). Many of these callers also express concern about the “different ending.” For Eliza to return to Higgins, however, was not Shaw’s original idea of a “happy ending” for the play. Shaw’s notion of Eliza’s happy ending is explained in considerable detail in the epilogue to the 1913 play, which appears in most anthologies and in the Literary Touchstone.


Perhaps noting the difference(s) between the 1913 stage play (the Literary Touchstone) and the 1938 screenplay (and the musicals it inspired) presents the opportunity to do a play-to-movie-to-movie comparison/contrast, taking into consideration the limitations of the genre (the inconvenience and expense of additional set and costume changes in a live performance) versus the expectations of the audience (added and expanded scenes, altered endings, etc.).


Eliza and Higgins, like Scrooge and Tiny Tim, touch something deep within the hearts and souls of those who encounter them—whether in a public-domain text, a black-and-white classic film, or a lavish costume-extravaganza that probably should have starred Julie Andrews.


But that’s another post for another day.