Spelling, Grammar, and Punctuation Examples

A recent conversation on Twitter with @WendyDrexler got me thinking about all the resources I have saved for teaching grammar. One of my biggest pet peeves is seeing incorrect spelling or grammar in a professional setting - stores, signs, public places, etc. I use the word professional loosely. Look at the pictures, and you'll see why.

Last year on my way to work one morning I nearly drove into a gas pump trying to snap a picture of this atrocity. Once at school, I shared it with my home room, and we immediately wrote and faxed an angry email to the Dunkin' Donuts location. Their reply never came, but the next day the sign was corrected, thus proving the silent effectiveness of grammar vigilance.

This sign is posted for a water ride at the former Six Flags location in Darien, NY. I'm supposed to put my full trust on a roller coaster that's traveling upside down at 60 miles per hour, but they can't handle catching a simple grammatical error? Now you know why I won't ride on roller coasters.

I have nothing to say about this one, other than it was posted outside a stand at a flea market. 'Nuff said.

This stand has become a staple at the annual "America's Fair" in Hamburg, NY, and its sign actually serves as a great example for students. Technically it could be correct IF it is owned by two people named Jared. If students can figure that out, you can rightfully assume they understand possessive nouns. If this isn't true, however, two things can be assumed about Jared. He didn't pay much attention to grammar lessons in school, and he's also a genius for figuring out how to make twinkies more delicious.

This is a tough one - Should it be owner's expense or owners' expense? For this sign to be correct, the creator would have to know the specifics behind the deed of the vehicle. This is posted at the side entrance of my school. Hooray for teachable moments.

Canadians and New Yorkers alike love their coffee from this regional chain named after the former hockey great. But despite his fatal car accident in 1974 and the selling of the franchise by his family, it's still named after him. Especially since he's been dead for 35 years, I don't expect to walk in and see a stack of Tims, so the sign should read Tim Horton's.

For some reason people find the need to make the word taco possessive (A Google search for "taco's" yields almost 250,000 hits). I have pictures of three other taco signs, and I always told myself if I found one more I would create whoistaco.com to host my collection. I'm just crazy enough to do it.

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Top 3 Moments in NY State Testing

With the end of the year looming just over the horizon, there is only one obstacle left for students before summer freedom can begin – final exams. In New York, state assessments are staggered throughout the year, but the race to get through local exams got me thinking of my favorite moments in state testing. Here are my top three.


#3 - New York State English Language Arts Exam, 2005 Grade 8 Listening Section

Kids had to listen to a speech on the accomplishments of Jacques Cousteau and his impact on the conservationist movement, then write an essay. These are actual responses I had to score:

1. Ocean conservation is very important because without water we would all drop dead of dehydration.
2. The author who said "Cousteau is the voice of the ocean" was using personification. Oceans cannot talk, and the author knows this.
3. A man named Francis Plann was going to dump toxic barrels in the ocean, but Cousteau stopped him (This one is humorous, because the reading talked about France's plan to dump waste...)
4. Jacques was able to make an impact on marine life because he was a nice guy, and whales would not bite him.
5. Even though fish can't speak, it doesn't mean they shouldn't have the right to.
6. Jacques Cousteau was most famous for inventing the Iron Lung.

#2 - New York State English Language Arts Exam, 2006, Grade 8 Reading and Writing Section

By mid eighth grade, most kids are able to find subtle sexual innuendo in pretty much everything. In today's world, this means shouting “That's what she said!” after everything, but 2006 was a simpler time. They had to rely on state exams to get their jollies.

Take the reading passage from the 8th grade exam, for example. It was a poem called “Purple Snake.” The title along was enough to set some kids to giggling, but once they started reading, there was no stopping them. It was really about an old man creating a wood carving, but I doubt that's what my 13-year-olds were visualizing.

You can read the full poem here, or take a look at the highlights down below:

“It’s in there, sleeping,” Don Luis says and winks. He knows I want to feel the animal asleep in a piece of wood.

Slowly he strokes the wood, rough and wrinkled like his hands.

Don Luis rubs and strokes the animal.

Did the state education department think 8th graders would overlook something like this? Their teachers certainly didn't.

#1 - New York State Social Studies Exam, 2006 Grade 8 Multiple Choice

In addition to fretting over my own exam, I am also responsible for proctoring other state exams. My greatest moment in state testing comes from such an occasion.

I had a group of about 25 8th graders taking the multiple choice section of the Social Studies exam. Desks were in rows, and kids were spaced out as much as the room would allow. During the test I paced the room more to assert my presence than to look for trouble. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention.

After the test was over and I had collected the materials, a boy came up to my desk and asked me to check his bubble sheet. It was completely smeared with erasure marks. I asked him why, thinking that he had accidentally double-bubbled an answer thus throwing off all the following answers. Instead, he calmly explained that the boy next to him had been cheating off his paper. Rather than be the tattle-tale, he had purposely marked all the wrong answers, then went back and corrected them after the peeping eyes had gotten distracted elsewhere.

He got an 89% on the test, and his cheating neighbor scored somewhere in the 20s.

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Dear Former Teachers, I Turned Out Okay

Quite often, I find myself trying to imagine who my current students will become as they grow up. It's difficult to see past the roles they play in my room – the spaz, the loner, the jock (I'll stop there before the copyright infringement letters from The Breakfast Club start appearing in my mailbox), and that can be disheartening at times. I want my kids to grow up and lead happy and successful lives, but it's just not realistic to assume that will be the case for all of them. It's uncharacteristically pessimistic of me to think this way, but it's reality.

Reflecting on my students made me reflect on myself at that age. I know the role that the 13-year-old me played was a bit sketchy at times. What portrait of the future did my younger self paint to my former teachers? Probably not a very promising one.

Last week I tracked down three of my 8th grade teachers, and sent them an email. I felt it was important that they know I survived college, found a good job, and started a family. It means a lot to me that they know their troubles didn't go without notice.

Here's how I started my letter:

My name is John Mikulski, and I was your 8th grade student in the 94-95 school year.

Like many 13-year-old boys, I was awkward, irritating, and definitely a bit smelly on warm days. I remember crying at the dinner table over homework, and I remember having no clue how to impress the guys while looking cool in front of the girls. 8th grade was a difficult year for me, but for some reason, it stands out as a defining time in my life.

I found writing my letter, and reading the two responses I received to be truly rewarding. I encourage everyone to contact a former teacher and do the same. Tell them you turned out ok. That you're happy. But most importantly, that you are all these things in small part because of them.

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Am I a lifer?

My father was a teacher for 25 years at a small junior/senior high school in Western New York. The school was surrounded by farmland, the pay was meager, and for the first 15 years his office was a broom closet behind the stage. But he loved it.

He told me he was a lifer. For better or worse, that was the district that he planned to be at forever.

It has been seven years now in the district that gave me my first job, and I often ask myself if I will be a lifer too. Some days that question is easier to answer than others.

I love my job, and my district. But sometimes I wonder what it would be like in another school. Or another profession all together. Is that abnormal?

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Things Students Say (And What They Really Mean)

When kids say... I don't understand.
They really mean... I wasn't paying attention when you gave directions.

When kids say... I have to use the bathroom.
They really mean... Your lesson is boring so I think I'll walk the halls for a bit.

When kids say... I have use the bathroom because I have my period.
They really mean... I plan on doing whatever I want for the next 20 minutes because there is no way on Earth you are going to ask me why I took so long.

When kids say... I can't find my homework.
They really mean... I'm too lazy to come up with a good excuse why my homework isn't done.

When kids say... Can I do extra credit?
They really mean... My parents are mad at me because of my grades.

When kids say... Can we sit where we want today?
They really mean... I have no plans of paying attention today, and sitting next to my friends will make it much easier to discuss more important things.

When kids say... I'm sorry for cheating.
They really mean... I'm sorry I got caught cheating.

When kids say... This is stupid.
They really mean... This stuff is way over my head.

When kids say... What time does this period end?
They really mean... How much longer do I have to sit here? I don't know how to read an analog clock.

When kids say... Can I type this?
They really mean... Can I copy and paste the Wikipedia entry then spend the rest of the period checking email, playing games, and Google searching pictures of Angelina Jolie?

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Blogging Challenge

Have you ever heard of Centralia, Pennsylvania?

It's is a small coal mining town similar to many other small towns across America. The one difference is that Centralia has been on fire since 1962.

There are conflicting stories as to how this happened, but the basic idea is that a fire started in the mines beneath the town and was never extinguished. Rather than live with the dangerous sink holes and toxic gases, residents fled to safer ground. Today, Centralia is a modern day ghost town.


I see blogs like Centralia all the time - sites that were once established and thriving suddenly left derelict by their owners. Do one of these blogs belong to you? If so, here's an open challenge. Log in and post something new. Let's revive some of these abandoned blogs! If you do, post your link in the comments below!

Experts predict Centralia will continue to burn for the next 100 years or so. Let's not wait that long for you to update your blog.

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What to Expect from Bing.com

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9 Concessions Teachers Must Make

Concession - The act of conceding or yielding.

1. I can only control what happens in my classroom
The social aspects of school life dominate the hallways and it is going to follow students into the classroom regardless of how prepared I am. Girls will cry about a boy, boys will argue about sports teams. And both of these things will interrupt my plans.

2. There will be bad days
I am allowed to have a bad day, and so are my students. I am not allowed to take it out on my students (although I'm sometimes tempted to make them the proverbial dog that gets kicked), and they shouldn't take it out on me either.

3. Technology is going to fail
The general rule with technology is that when it decides to get sick, it doesn't hiccup. It projectile vomits. When you hand 30 students each a laptop, something is going to go wrong.

4. There will be days with no lesson plans
It's okay to show a movie. It's okay to schedule work days. It's okay to edit and revise. All within moderation, and all at appropriate times.

5. Some kids have more important things to worry about than my homework
I had a student in my room a few years ago that lived in a mobile home that didn't have running water. I have several kids (that I know of) this year whose families have had to answer to CPS. These kids have bigger problems than memorizing poetic devices for my quiz on Friday, and it's just not realistic to think that should be a priority to them.

6. Regardless of my expectations, my students are still just kids
I wrote this blog post about this earlier (which, incidentally, got me thinking about this list.)

7. There is going to be a student in my room that I dislike
I'm a pretty easy guy to get along with, but in life I accept that there will people whose personalities clash with my own. In the real world, I ignore the people. But in the classroom, they are still my students – and they can't be treated any differently.

8. Lessons will not go as planned
I openly admit to my 1st period class that they are the guinea pigs. What I do 1st period and what I do 9th are usually different. Good teachers don't stay the course – they compensate for pot holes and detours along the way.

9. Grades aren't everything
This goes not only for teachers, but for students and parents too. I had a message on my school voice mail last quarter from a parent demanding to know why his daughter's grade dropped from a 96 to a 94. It's the journey that's important, not the destination, right?

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Rationalizing Student Behavior

When I was in sixth grade, my English teacher started each week with a spelling pretest. At some point during the week the words would be used in class or as part of a homework assignment, and then the final test was on Friday. This routine was followed every week. By about June, I finally figured it out.

Every class has that kid who wanders in the door only to gasp, “There's a test today?!” I was that kid. And it wasn't because I was trying to be funny; I truly couldn't see the big picture.

It's easy to forget that our students are just kids, especially at the middle school level. They aren't going to be able to conceptualize ideas (or in my case, sequence of events!), and they aren't going to have very good follow-through. It's just the nature of the beast.

It's easy to say this right now because I don't have a bumbling student standing in front of me trying to explain his erratic behavior. But the next time I do, I hope I can think back to myself in sixth grade. Teachers should have high expectations of their students, but let's never forget that at the end of the day, they're just kids.

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