At least they give me good blog fodder, right?

When we started the class, I told them that they were responsible to read the book – that I was NOT going to regurgitate the book back to them; rather, I would add to what was covered in the book, but they would still be responsible to know it, since they were going to get graded on the principles laid out in the book.  I also said I wasn’t above giving pop quizzes to make sure they were reading.

Tuesday I gave a pop quiz.  It was 5 questions, plus 1 for extra credit.  It was very, very, very basic information from the book.  The book looks like it’s written for about an 8th grade level audience.  The longest chapter so far has been about 15 pages.  It’s not hard.

I had 1 kid answer all 6.  Several kids answered only 5.  The majority could only answer 3.

Sigh.

One of my questions was “What are the 4 words that kill copy?”  This was one chapter.  6 whole pages that explained why these 4 words killed copy.  All they had to do was look at the chapter and they should have gotten this question.

The answer is “Allegedly, Suspects, Apparently and Undetermined”

Answers I got?

“Who, what, where, when”

“Was, were”

“Words in the past”

“I, me, my, we”

And my favorite…

“Uh, like”

WHO WRITES “UH” IN BROADCAST NEWS COPY – AND WHY ARE THEY STILL EMPLOYED??

I need a drink.  Or 3.

Needless to say, out of 14 kids that took the quiz, only 3 ended up passing it.

Like, uh, I hope this gets them to like, uh, read the book from now on.  Because they are definitely like, uh, going to get another like, uh quiz.  Like, uh, soon.