I spent a class last week working with some English students. I tried to get them playing with palindromes, to little avail. Some how most Grade 8 students don’t seem to find palindromes interesting, or at least they don’t like the way I present them.
These unique words or phrases, such as radar or racecar, can be read forwards or backwards and they spell the same thing. I think they’re fascinating, but most of the kids tuned out and started playing other language games. While it was encouraging that they still played grammar games and wrote stories, I was a bit discouraged that no one was playing with palindromes.
Well, no one seemed to be until I saw two girls watching a YouTube video of Weird Al Yankovic’s song “Bob.” I almost told those two to stop wasting time until I realized what they were watching. Weird Al would make an intriguing English teacher.
(Cross posted from Befuddled.)
Stumble it!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 7:27 am and is filed under By James, Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
A friend of mine made a Palindromes calendar called “So Many Dynamos” that is really wonderful. It’s published locally here in Philadelphia but you might be able to call the bookstore and see if they could send some: http://www.myspace.com/heatefetaeh … the combos of words and drawings I think is particularly fun. Cheers! Christina