Writing on Command

  Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it may just secure an accurate ATLAS reading score too By Sarah Stratton What does curiosity have to do with the ATLAS Reading test? It quite possibly may be the key to getting accurate test results from our students.  High stakes tests tend to produce accurate test results. Why? Students have to pass them to graduate. They have a stake in the test. The test matters to them. The test impacts their lives. Their future.  Having spent close to 20 years teaching high school English in upstate NY and being charged with getting my students through their high stakes English Regents Exam, I personally know the difference between preparing students for a state exam and preparing students for a high stakes state exam–student motivation. Yes, some students will try their hardest on their state exams regardless whether they are high stakes or not. Especially the younger students. However, once students realize or find out that it doesn’t matte...

Zeugma? What? I know. Our thoughts exactly several years ago when my students and I were going over the correct answers to a sample AP Language and Composition test. It was one of the answer choices but was not the correct answer. Nonetheless, it piqued our curiosity, and we looked it up. The definition: the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words when appropriate to each but in a different way. Still confused? So were we. Sample sentence: On his fishing trip, he caught three trout and a cold. Okay–now we get it. Caught three trout has a different meaning than caught a cold. That is a zeugma.  The fact that it caused curiosity obviously caused the knowledge to stick. I knew they were rare because I couldn’t think of any I knew. Fast forward a few years. I was teaching Bitton-Jackson’s I Have Lived a Thousand Years for the first time. (She uses rhetorical techniques and devices so well, that teaching even excerpts of this book to students helps them learn to recognize th...