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"Taking a cue from The Scarlet Letter, the website Jezebel compiled racially insensitive tweets directed toward President Obama by high school students across the country, naming names and even calling the students' schools. The tweets - posted by students under their real identities - covered the full range of bigotry, from racial epithets to basketball stereotypes, with the N-word in abundance. In response, Giga OMasked, "When does shaming racist kids turn into online bullying?" The answer to that is never. It would be a mistake to mischaracterize the denunciation of racially offensive speech as abusive. To the contrary, that give-and-take (or more precisely "say something deeply offensive and get verbally pummeled") is what free speech in America is all about. That's the flaw in virtually every strategy to keep students in both high school and college on the social media straight and narrow. High school is all about preparing the next generation for citizenship. We teach them civics, history, a smattering of math and science and hand them a diploma. But we too often also try to control their every move. That's literally the case with the news last week that a sophomore at John Jay High School in San Antonio was expelled after refusing to carry an ID with a computer chip designed to track the movements of every student in the school."

The Exploratorium is a museum of science, art, and human perception in San Francisco. The website offers a place where students can explore their curiosity through videos, reading, educational games, and other activities. There is a wealth of scientific information that is engaging for young people!

This is the follow-up activity to Wow Grammar, Such Doge. The students found these two exercise to be stimulating, thought-provoking, and "difficult!". They were very engaged in these tasks.

This document and the following one are an exercise I created for my Grade 11 English class to get them thinking about what grammar is, and how the Internet has accelerated the creation and adoption of new language conventions. PS I'm Patricia Kleeb @ St Mildred's Lightbourn School