Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Vocabulary Nightmares and Final Dreams

Well, the end of the semester is near! I am currently in grading Hell, but I did it to myself. I gave deadlines too close together, so now I'm grading, not only vocabulary assignments, but also research papers, critical argument papers, and finals.
Many of my colleagues think I'm crazy because I format my finals in short answer and essay form. Many of my colleagues pride themselves on the multiple choice, scantron, finals, which makes it easy for the instructor, but it's like winning the lottery for the student--either you pick the right ones or you don't. I don't believe that multiple choice is a good assessment tool; therefore, I make them learn the information. Maybe that makes more work for me, but, overall, I'm proud of this decision.
I digress. The main point for this post is to share with my readers some of the things my students write about. I mentioned vocabulary assignments. Well, I gave my students a vocabulary assignment at the beginning of the semester. My Writing students had to come up with 50 over the course of the semester, and my Reading students had to come up with 100 (I am teaching two sections of each). Well, I learned my lesson. I did not tell them how many they had to turn in when, but I gave them a final deadline (Sunday 12/4 by midnight). I did it to myself. I reminded them weekly, but I held them to nothing, then I received a barrage of emails all day Sunday from those who decided to leave the assignment until the last minute. I have been grading so much vocabulary that I actually dreamed about vocab the other night--not to mention my dream about the final exams.
I am still grading vocabulary, and part of their assignment was to create new, original sentences from the words they defined. Some of the sentences are really quite amusing.
Here we go.

Word: Entrails
Sentence: My father had to get his entrails back.

Word: Solitary
Sentence: My mama kept me solitary from my pregnant friends because they're a bad influence in my life.

Word: Intoxicated
Sentence: An old man was intoxicated in the morning.

Word: Countenance
Sentence: The countenance of the person was funny when he fell in the dump.

Word: Damsel
Sentence: The girl looked old, but she was a damsel.

Word: Impale
Sentence: Needles are used to impale people's ears.

Word: Grapple
Sentence: The spy grappled himself.

This next one is funny because they had to tell me where they found/heard the word:
Word: Debt
Source: Myself
Sentence: I overdrew my credit card, so I was in debt.
**Needless to say, this student did NOT get credit for this word.

I actually thought I would have gathered more today, but they were pretty good. Vocabulary is finally done! I think I only have one more log to grade! Yay!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Darby:

So, I want to start a blog. Can you be a helper? I cannot pay money.

MJ

Darby said...

Starting a blog is easy! I cannot pay money either! Good thing it's free! :0) Let me know how I can be of help.