Phonetic Punctuation

I am using a quote from Victor Borge in tomorrow's presentation...which made me realize I had no idea who he was. So I looked him up...and he is hilarious! This is one of his sketches on "Phonetic Punctuation" There are two videos below where he explains it.

The first one is a bit rougher, but subtitled in English. The second one is cleaner without subtitles (and somehow I think not as funny).






What do you think, would it be easier if instead of using intonation when we spoke we had sounds that marked the place of punctuation?

A Subordinating Conjunctions Song

A while ago I found a song about subordinating conjunctions created by another teacher from her blog That Ridiculous Girl I loved it and have used in in class ever since!

I altered it a bit and added another verse, but students really tend to commit it to memory. Here's the basic gist:

Now, using this to help students memorize subordinating conjunctions is great! But as always remember Bloom! Try to get them to use higher level thinking!

Can they:

1. Rewrite the song in your own words.
2. Transition words can be divided into different categories (addition, contrast, comparison, etc.). Sort the subordinators listed above into their different categories.
3. Find a song which uses them, and punctuate the lyrics correctly.
4. Write a comic strip/short story which uses three of these (and punctuates correctly)
5. Add another verse with missing subordinating conjunctions
6. Make an acronym or initialism which will help you remember subordinating conjunctions.Make their own song (be in a rap, pop hit, etc.)
7. What if a conjunction were a person. What kind of person would "if" be? What about "whenever"? Draw a personification of the word and explain it to the class.

How else do you help your students use subordinating conjunctions?