Being a high school English teacher grading a New York State Regents Exam takes dedication, diligence and time.  I must admit that our department is able to let lose after hours of intense grading and we giggle and have a few laughs and then it is back to the grind.  It’s not only the Regents Exam, it is plugging in the grade, putting in my own English grades and figuring out a grade distribution form and making copies for guidance and the principal and the department head.  I can’t help but feel envious of teachers who teach something other than English.  These exams require multiple readers and students are responding to multiple tasks all within one essay.  We like to think and hope that we have prepared them for these essays during the year.  We enjoy each victory and literally cheer for each one, big or small.  It is a demanding exam and I congratulate all of my students who took it two times in order to really show their writing abilities by creating a chart before writing, being an active reader and mostly, going back and looking for the multiple choice questions; because they ARE in there!  Each year I teach my students a little ELA song to the tune of “Row, Row, Row your boat”.  It goes like this:

Write, Write, Write we will

For the ELA

Active reader, organizer,

Then the essay!

We have fun singing it when we are practicing in class and especially right before the exam.  My honors class likes to do it in a round!  The last few days I gave extra credit to any student who stood in front of the class and sang alone the ELA song.  Now, that was fun!  I am hoping to have that song stick in their minds when they go off to college or even off to English in their senior year.  Everyone likes music right?