Courtesy of Pat from the Successful Teaching blog via the Diigo Education Bookmarks.

Here are a couple of great resources to help you introduce this epic to your students:

Dante’s Inferno - A Virtual Tour of Hell

The World of Dante

Don’t let its age fool you–Dante’s Inferno is still one of the most captivating, readable, and thought-provoking works of literature in the world. Its division into relatively short cantos make it easy to use as a read-aloud. I started reading it once to a group of eighth graders with the intention of giving them a taste of it, but they wouldn’t let me stop until I had finished the entire Inferno. Students from that class still come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed it, and how vivid it is in their minds still.

But don’t take my word for it–try it yourself.

• “She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef.”
• “The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.”
• “Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.”

See the complete list at Help.com.

1. Say hello!
2. Shake their hands as they come in.
3. Give them a high five.
4. Welcome them in Pig Latin.
5. Say Hola!
6. Write a message on the chalkboard/overhead/digital screen.
7. Have a positive song playing as they enter.
8. Play a musical instrument.
9. Recite an inspirational poem.
10. Sing a happy song.
11. Give them each a piece of candy.
12. Give them a fortune cookie.
13. Scramble the words Welcome Back on the board and have them solve it.
14. Do a tap dance.
15. Play a clip from Dead Poets Society or another inspirational movie.
16. Have them punch a time clock as they enter.
17. Perform a singing telegram.
18. Say Wilkommen!
19. Introduce yourself.
20. Teach them how to line dance
21. Yell, “Let’s get ready to rumble!”
22. Play “Zombie Nation” by Kernkraft 400.
23. Play a YouTube video.
24. Breakdance.
25. Take a picture of the class to remember their names.
26. Lead them in a prayer service.
27. Hand them a free pencil customized with your name.
28. Recite “Pioneers, O Pioneers” by Walt Whitman.
29. Ask all your online teacher friends to send well wishes and advice via email, and read the best ones.
30. Bring in a brown bag filled with objects that define you, explain the objects, then invite your students to do the same.
31. Laugh like a mad scientist (BWAH HAH HAH!).
32. Bring in plain donuts, frosting and cake decorations and invite them to decorate their own breakfast (or make one for a friend).
33. Have them introduce themselves.
34. Have them introduce themselves while doing jumping jacks.
35. Have them break through a big Go Get ‘Em poster, like a football team running onto the field.
36. Ask for their autographs for your autograph book of Future Famous People.

Be sure to add your own suggestions by commenting below.

And, as a bonus, 10 ways NOT to welcome students back:

1. Show them a slide show of your summer vacation.
2. Tell them the results of your annual physical.
3. Hand them a discipline slip as they enter and tell them not to lose it, because they’ll probably need it soon.
4. Slap them on the butt and say, “Way to go! You actually got up in time to make it to school!”
5. Sit at your desk reading Retirement Planning for the Aging Schoolteacher
6. Assign them seats based on last year’s standardized test results, highest scores in the back, lowest scores in the front.
7. Play grunge music and start a mosh pit.
8. As they walk into your room, have your principal point out individual students who got in trouble last year.
9. Hand them a Christmas list so they can get working on your gift early.
10. And finally, point out the big countdown you’ve posted in the front of the room that marks the number of days until school gets out.

How Neal Stephenson’s Typewriter Kept Him Writing

For a fun way to engage students in writing and help them with the trait of word choice, challenge them to write their own lipgrams.  When they’re done they can exchange the lipograms and try to guess the missing letter.

Another interesting exercise in word choice might be to imitate Mary Godolphin’s one-syllable adaptations.  Godolphin (Lucy Aikin) wrote one-syllable versions of Pilgrim’s Progress and Robinson Crusoe.  Students could adapt short stories or they could make up their own.

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In summary, you’ll need the following materials:

• A bluetooth enabled computer
• An LCD projector
• A Wii remote
• A homemade LED pen
• Johnny Chung Lee’s free software available on this page

I haven’t personally tried this yet, since I’m buried deep in converting our entire school from PCs to Macs, but I hope to try it this summer.

Let me know how it works for you.

A scene from The Yellow Admiral

Doc Savage

Electric Light Orchestra - Out of the Blue

Electric Light Orchestra - Discovery

Gandalf the Grey

Kansas - Point Of Know Return

A Pre-Raphaelite Painting

A Library

The Moody Blues - The Present

Don Quixote 01

Don Quixote 02

Don Quixote 03

Streets Of Fire: A Rock & Roll Fable 01

Streets Of Fire: A Rock & Roll Fable 02

Tad Williams - Stone of Farewell

But for you rebels out there who subservisely sneak diagramming into your curriculum between studying for state and national tests, here are some resources from the Diagramming Sentences page at the Guide to Grammar and Writing sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation:

• First, this quote by Gertrude Stein: “I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.”
• Second, this PowerPoint presentation on the basics of diagramming.
• Third, two pages of examples of basic and advanced diagrams:
  • Basic diagramming
  • Advanced diagramming
• Fourth, the totally cool diagrams of both the Pledge of Allegiance and the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. (Thanks to Boing Boing)

And finally, this tribute to diagramming from Investor’s Business Daily, October 17, 2000:

When Joseph R. Mallon Jr. bumps up against a complex problem, he thinks back to a lesson he learned in high school from the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception.

The Philadelphia-area school’s Catholic nuns taught him the art of diagramming a sentence. Once all the parts of speech lined up, Mallon pulled clarity from the chaos. It’s a process he uses today to tackle tough issues as chief executive and chairman of Measurement Specialties Inc.

“Sit down quietly. Take (the issue) apart into its component parts. Make sure all the components fit together well. They’ve got to be well chosen, fit together and make sense. There are few (business) problems that can’t be solved that way, as dire as it might seem,” Mallon said. “Sentence diagramming is one of the best analytical techniques I ever learned.”