My co-teacher and I met in the parking lot before school and stared into my car trunk at the costumes and props we had gathered over the weekend. We were giddy with excitement and nervous because neither of us had__1__anything like this before. The co-teacher, Alice, had found a book called Teaching Content Outrageously by Stanley Pogrow, which explained how secondary classrooms can incorporate drama into any content to__2__students in learning—incorporating the element of surprise, for example, or developing role-play or simulation experiences to teach content and standards. The book inspired us to change how we taught our seventh-grade language-arts students in a high-poverty school that__3__with test scores, especially reading and math. The sense of urgency in the building was__4__,and the pressure on teachers to increase student achievement was often__5__. The district required us to teach a curriculum__6__aligned with a 15-year-old reading textbook containing outdated articles about Ricky Martin, ice fishing, and cartography in a(n) __7_ that it was both condescending and__8__. But district personnel insisted that teachers use the textbook, citing evidence that it brought up test scores. The__9__curriculum, we decided, would never be enough to encourage our students to love reading and writing.Therefore, Alice and I decided to take the__10__and apply Pogrow’s advice. attempt persuade designated place engage rigidly extent risk innovatively struggled nonexistent tried obvious uninteresting overwhelming