Are they ready? For high school English: they'll be a lot closer after our three-week boot camp!

Instructor, May-June, 2006 by Olugbemisola Amusashonubi-Perkovich

Imagine: June rolls around and you have a class full of kids ready to head off to ninth-grade English. And, come fall, the high-school teacher calls you up just to congratulate you on a job well done. He's never seen such superstars!

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It may sound lofty, but that's the goal we had in mind as we called high-school teachers to talk about what exactly kids need to know in order to survive and thrive in the more rigorous high school classroom. Zanthe Taylor, who has taught both middle and high school students, echoed a common sentiment: "There needs to be a kind of 'boot camp' approach to ensure that everyone is on the same page as soon as possible. Especially in today's age of instant messaging and e-mails, kids just don't seem to get that formal footing as soon as they need to in order to be literate."

Boot camp may sound intimidating, but we don't think you'll find ours scary at all (and neither will your students). With the help of teachers and experts, we created three weeks of hands-on, authentic lessons that focus on the skills teachers and experts agree are essential for succeeding in high school (and not just in English). On your mark, get set, go!

WEEK #1: GRAMMAR GOODS

Sometimes it seems like your kids speak in code: "LOL," and "TLK-2-U-L-8-R" ring a bell? No wonder the basics of grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary are more remote than ever. The first week of our boot camp is devoted to these fundamentals.

* MONDAY: Review punctuation by having students write a short scene filled with dialogue, which contains heapfuls of those troublesome commas and quotation marks. Where to start? Invite kids to write a famous scene from a book or movie, but in a different time period (e.g. the ball scene from Romeo and Juliet taking place at a modern day school dance).

* TUESDAY: Conjunction junction, what's your function? Do a little retro rocking and rolling with Schoolhouse Rock. This popular television show from the 1970s continues to resonate with kids today. Students can perform the tunes (online at www.schoolhouserock.tv) and then write their own versions.

* WEDNESDAY: It's game time! Today, try using Mad Libs to teach parts of speech. Visit http://rinkworks.com/crazylibs to access free Mad Lib-style puzzles based on passages from Hamlet, Gulliver's Travels, Alice in Wonderland, and more.

* THURSDAY: Continue your parts-of-speech workout by using board games such as Scattergories and Taboo. Go to www.lessonplanspage.com/LAAdjAdvTaboo912.htm to see how one teacher uses Taboo as a springboard for teaching adjectives and adverbs.

* FRIDAY: Make all of this week's practice practical by helping kids in their quest for a summer job. Reinforce lessons in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure by inviting students to draft their own cover letters and resumes. Find helpful teaching tips at http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/#writjob. Once students have a first draft, have them trade with a partner to proofread--no employer will be happy with "TTYL!"

WEEK #2: TALKING ABOUT LITERATURE

Experts agree that nothing helps young people make meaning of literature quite like talking about it. But talking about anything can be a challenge with this age group. Your students will face increasingly challenging texts in high school, so it's important to help them develop strategies now to manage book talk with ease.

* MONDAY: This week, unleash your students' inner MTV hosts by creating a "talk show" based on a book you've been reading in class. Begin today by dividing students into teams: the host and production team, who will prepare questions for the guests; the guests, who act as the characters from your reading; the audience members, who will pose additional questions; and the journalists; who report on what happens during the show.

* TUESDAY: Have teams meet and brainstorm possible questions and responses. They may also want to think about costumes and cheap props they can use to get into their roles.

* WEDNESDAY: Rehearsal time! Try running through the talk show together. You're the "director," so you may want to encourage the host to ask more probing questions or the guests to think more closely about how their characters would respond in a certain situation.

* THURSDAY: Break a leg! It's time to tape the show. You might want to serve as an additional audience member yourself if you'd like to guide the discussion.

* FRIDAY: It's a wrap. Share your show with another class or with staff members. Invite them to ask any questions they may have for your students.

WEEK #3: WRITING, WRITING, WRITING

Stacey Sarnicola, a high school teacher in Brooklyn, New York, says that students need daily writing practice--but that drills and essays don't necessarily build successful high school writers. "Kids need fun writing, like journals or free writing on topics they like so they are not turned off," she says.

* MONDAY: Use songwriting to practice descriptive and/or persuasive writing. Students can share and examine lyrics of popular songs and discuss as a class what makes particular songs successful. As students decide what type of song they want to write (love song, uplifting, angry, etc.) they must figure out what words convey the emotions best. Rhyming dictionaries and thesauruses will come in handy!