Challenge du jour.

We started reading Romeo and Juliet today in my 8th grade class. Explaining why, in Shakespeare's day, biting one's thumb at someone else was cause for offense is a little tricky. Getting them to understand without actually demonstrating the modern day equivalent is interesting, to say the least. Someone asked me how Sampson could bite his thumb without it being obvious to Abraham. The example I offered was someone rubbing their eye with their index finger, but not with their index finger. There was a lot of "ohhhhhh yeah!"s in the room. Then, I had to explain to both classes that in reading the text out loud, they were putting the wrong inflection on the line, "Bring me my sword, ho!" That does change the meaning a bit. I had the same problem last year. It's hard not to laugh while I'm reining them back in. This should be a fun few weeks.