The Essential 55 by Ron Clark for Elementary Students

The Essential 55 by Ron Clark for Elementary Students A few years ago, I watched Disneys Teacher of the Year Ron Clark on the Oprah Winfrey Show. He told the inspirational story of how he had developed and implemented a set of 55 essential rules for success in his classroom. He and Oprah discussed the essential 55 things that adults (both parents and teachers) need to teach children and hold them accountable for. He compiled these rules into a book called The Essential 55. Eventually he wrote a second book called The Essential 11. Some of the Essential 55 rules surprised me with their mundane nature. For example, If you dont say thank you within 30 seconds, Im taking it back. Or, If someone asks you a question, you need to answer it and then ask a question yourself. That last one has always been one of my pet peeves with children. Here are some of the ideas that Ron Clark says are essential for kids to learn: Make eye contactRespect other; ideas and opinionsDo not save seatsSay thank you within three seconds of receiving somethingWhen you win, do not brag; when you lose, do not show angerDo your homework each and every night without failDo not talk in a movie theaterBe the best person you can beAlways be honestIf you are asked a question in conversation, ask a question in returnPerform random acts of kindnessLearn the names of all the teachers in the school and greet themIf someone bumps into you, even if it was not your fault , say excuse meStand up for what you believe in To tell you the truth, I had felt fed up with students general lack of manners for quite awhile. For some reason, it hadnt occurred to me to teach good manner explicitly. I figured this was something that parents would teach their children at home. Also, theres such a big push towards standards and test scores in my district that I didnt see how I could get away with teaching manners and common courtesies. But, after hearing Rons passion and his students gratitude for what he had taught them, I knew I had to give the concept a try. With Mr. Clarks book in hand and a determination to see solid improvement in how my students would treat me and their classmates in the coming school year, I set out to implement the program in my own way. First of all, feel free to adapt the 55 rules to your own needs, preferences, and personality. Ive adapted it to be Mrs. Lewis Essential 50. I got rid of some of the rules that didnt apply to my circumstances and added a few to reflect what I would really like to see in my classroom. After school started, I introduced the concept of my Essential 50 to my students. With each rule, we would take a few moments to discuss why its important and how it will look when we act a certain way. Role-playing and a frank, interactive discussion seemed to work best for me and my students. Right away, I saw a difference in my students behavior that has lasted for months. I taught them how to applaud for things that they like, so now they applaud whenever anyone enters the classroom. It makes the visitor feel so welcome and it always makes me smile because its so cute! Also, they have really taken to answering me formally, saying Yes, Mrs. Lewis or No, Mrs. Lewis. Sometimes its hard to fit a non-academic subject like the Essential 55 into your busy day. I struggle with it, too. But its definitely worth it when you see such a visible and lasting improvement in your students behavior and manners. If you havent checked out Ron Clarks The Essential 55 for yourself, pick up a copy as soon as you can. Even if its mid-year, its never too late to teach your students valuable lessons that they will likely remember for years to come.

The Role of Interjections in English Grammar

The Role of Interjections in English Grammar Shortly after Steve Jobss death in the fall of 2011, his sister, Mona Simpson, revealed that Jobss final words were monosyllables, repeated three times: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW. As it happens, interjections (such as oh and wow) are among the first words we learn as children- usually by the age of a year and a half. Eventually, we pick up several hundred of these brief, often exclamatory utterances. As the 18th-century philologist, Rowland Jones observed, It appears that interjections make up a considerable part of our language. Nevertheless, interjections are commonly regarded as the outlaws of English grammar. The term itself, derived from Latin, means something thrown in between. Why Interjections Are Overlooked Interjections usually stand apart from normal sentences, defiantly maintaining their syntactic independence. (Yeah!) They arent marked inflectionally for grammatical categories such as tense or number. (No sirree!) And because they show up more frequently in spoken English than in writing, most scholars have chosen to ignore them. (Aw.) Linguist Ute Dons has summarized the uncertain status of interjections: In modern grammars, the interjection is located at the periphery of the grammatical system and represents a phenomenon of minor importance within the word class system (Quirk et al. 1985: 67). It is unclear whether the interjection is to be considered an open or closed word class. Its status is also special in that it does not form a unit with other word classes and that interjections are only loosely connected with the rest of the sentence. Furthermore, interjections stand apart as they often contain sounds which are not part of the phoneme inventory of a language (e.g. ugh, Quirk et al. 1985: 74).(Descriptive Adequacy of Early Modern English Grammars. Walter de Gruyter, 2004) But with the advent of corpus linguistics and conversation analysis, interjections have recently begun to attract serious attention. The Study of Interjections Early grammarians tended to regard interjections as mere sounds rather than words- as outbursts of passion rather than meaningful expressions. In the 16th century, William Lily defined the interjection as a parte of speche, whyche betokeneth a sodayne passion of the mynde, under an unperfect voice. Two centuries later, John Horne Took argued that the brutish, inarticulate interjection . . . has nothing to do with speech, and is only the miserable refuge of the speechless. More recently, interjections have been variously identified as adverbs (the catch-all category), pragmatic particles, discourse markers, and single-word clauses. Others have characterized interjections as pragmatic noises, response cries, reaction signals, expressives, inserts, and evincives. At times interjections call attention to a speakers thoughts, often as sentence openers (or initiators): Oh, you must be kidding. But they also function as back-channel signals- feedback offered by listeners to show theyre paying attention. (At this point, class, feel free to say Gosh! or at least Uh-huh.) Its now customary to divide interjections into two broad classes, primary and secondary: Primary interjections are single words (such as ah, ouch, and yowza) that are used only as interjections and that dont enter into syntactic constructions. According to linguist Martina Drescher, primary interjections generally serve to lubricate conversations in a ritualized manner.*Secondary interjections (such as well, hell, and rats) also belong to other word classes. These expressions are often exclamatory and tend to mix with oaths, swear words, greeting formulas, and the like. Drescher describes secondary interjections as derivative uses of other words or locutions which have lost their original conceptual meanings- a process known as semantic bleaching. As written English grows more and more colloquial, both classes have migrated from speech into print. One of the more intriguing characteristics of interjections is their multifunctionality: the same word may express praise or scorn, excitement or boredom, joy or despair. Unlike the comparatively straightforward denotations of other parts of speech, the meanings of interjections are largely determined by intonation, context, and what linguists call pragmatic function. Geez, we might say, you really had to be there. Ill leave the next-to-last word on interjections to the authors of the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (1999): If we are to describe spoken language adequately, we need to pay more attention to [interjections] than has traditionally been done. To which I say, Hell, yeah! * Quoted by Ad Foolen in The Expressive Function of Language: Towards a Cognitive Semantic Approach. The Language of Emotions: Conceptualization, Expression, and Theoretical Foundation, ed. by Susanne Niemeier and Renà © Dirven. John Benjamins, 1997.