Farting in class

Yesterday I had to present a lesson plan on Hamlet to my class.

I spent hours working on it, researching ideas, writing, and revising.

I aligned my lesson around the TN state standards for teaching English and literature.

I planned activities according to Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences to accomodate different learning styles.

I planned alternative activities to allow student choice.

I created handouts, rubrics, instruction sheets, visual aids, and character charts.

I thought I was prepared.

That is, until my teacher said the word fart.

"Pardon me?" I inquired, perplexed and already turning red in the face.

Apparantly the acronym for the writing strategy I used - RAFT - reminded her of the word fart.

"You have to be careful when teaching middle and high schooler's," she said, "not to use words that can easily lend themselves to other words."

And that was the only teacher feedback I received on my lesson.

It did get me to thinking, however, that if nothing else my students would definitely remember the RAFT, or FART writing strategy for the rest of their lives. Besides, how funny would it be to say, "Hello class. Please take out your writing journals. Today we are going to work on FARTs!"