Wednesday, December 19, 2007

I Couldn't Make This Up if I Tried

All of my students have always had trouble identifying genres. (Do the rest of you have the same issue?) Right now I'm trying to combat that in several ways, one of which is by assigning writing in different genres. The other night they were supposed to write historical fiction.

Oh, dear.

Take a look at some of their stories. Please shake in laughter rather than shake your head in despair of all the things they don't really know. :)

--A woman named Britney helped slaves. She rescued Rosa Parks and created the Make a Wish Foundation. For all her hard work, she won tickets to the New Jersey Nets basketball games.

--"Long time ago in 1835, World War Two began. But George Bush said "why fight if we could get along". ... George stopped being Mr. nice guy and told them (both) to stop the fighting. If you don't stop I will kill you. George W. Bush said."

The piece de resistance was so 'perfect' that I scanned it for you. Enjoy!

I swear to god, people.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

First of all, welcome back.

Before test prep, I would do lessons on Columbus. My students would have to write a story as if they were on the voyage. Some students were on point. Others were so off the wall.

I found reading primary sources helped as well as historical fiction picture books.

However I am surprised they do not know genres. All of our classroom libraries are arranged by genre and so are book reports and reading logs. I would imagine your district elementary schools do the same.

Ms. M said...

Maybe they didn't know that their writing should be more historical and less fictional? Hopefully. Cars in 1990? Really? When were your kids born?

dramamath said...

That's why I love teaching math. At least I know why they make stuff up. This is scary.

ms. v. said...

oh. dear. god.

CaliforniaTeacherGuy said...

Aw, c'mon, Ms. V, where's your sense of humor? They ARE funny stories!

Anonymous said...

THIS is why my life, as an editor, SUCKS.