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School Slang

Materials

• School Terms
• Illustrated Slang
• Sample Dialogue
• Word Bingo (made at Saksena.net)
• Glossary of Terms My definitions for all these terms and slang, in case you want to hand it out to students, or if you don't know US high school culture well.

Although this lesson is designed to teach US school culture, it could easily be adapted for any other culture or country.

Vocab

Before students arrive I put the School Terms up on the board. Then I go over the terms by category, trying to prompt students to tell me what they mean or to guess. If students live in the US, this should go pretty quickly. Likewise if they have watched a lot of American movies set in high schools, they should be pretty quick to catch on. Otherwise, most of these terms may be completely unfamiliar to them and this can take a while. To make it a bit more interesting, I ask them if they have a similar term (or in the case of traditions, if they have something similar) in their school or language. When we talk about discipline, I ask them how teachers discipline them at their school. And so on. If they have been to the US, or are well-versed in movies, I might ask them to describe prom or homecoming. This part can generate a lot of questions about schooling in the US, particularly if your students are school-aged. So be ready! Alternatively, you may want to hold off on discussion until after the lesson.

Also it should be noted that nerd, geek, jock, and preppie can be very hurtful terms. For younger students, I wouldn't teach these terms. You probably want to be careful to point out that these are stereotypes or social groups but not absolute types.

I also always teach them that sophomore comes from the Greek word sophia meaning wisdom and the word moron. They get a kick out of that. If there's a class clown, I call him sophomoric and see how he reacts.

Now I hand out the illustrated slang worksheet. These terms and some of the inspiration for the pictures comes from The Slangman Guide to Street Speak 3 *. I ask the students to try to guess what the term means from the picture and then use it in a sentence.

Dialogue

Once we have gone through the vocab, I hand out the Sample Dialogue and pick two students to read aloud. Then I ask two different students to read it out loud, but to 'translate' the slang into normal English. For example, if the first line of dialogue is:
"Hey, look at these freshmen, trying to cram for the final."
They might say: "Hey, look at these first year students (or ninth year students) trying to study very hard in a short period of time for the end of the year examination that tests them on everything they learned in that class."

Finally I have the students write their own dialogues in pairs or small groups using as much slang as possible. This can also be a good homework assignment. After each group reads their dialogue, I correct any mistakes or mis-usages: 'I did an all-nighter' or 'I am an ace on the test'.

As a fun review for next class, you can play Word Bingo and I made the following Word Bingo sheets at Saksena.net, which is an awesome resource.

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Note: I decided to develop my own pictures because 1) sometimes I put the pictures up on the board and I can't draw the detailed pictures from Slangman. If you have a transparency projector or a computer projector, you could easily scan and print or project the images from Slangman. 2) The pictures there are great, but I like to have the kids try to guess the meaning from the pictures and some of the pictures are a bit obscure. 3) I didn't want to include all the terms in Slangman 4) I didn't think all the terms in Slangman were slang and thus wanted to cover them in the first part of the lesson.
However, Slangman is a great book and it has some great activities in it as well. I highly recommend it.
If you are the copyright holder to the Slangman books and there are any copyright issues with my pictures, please let me know.

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