“Acroterion: The ornamental finial placed on the angles of a pediment in classical architecture or on a stele. Also refers to the angle of a pediment.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Here is a worksheet on the noun motion and the verb move and their use when moving for something in a meeting (e.g. “I move to adjourn and go pig out at an Indian buffet in Murray Hill” or “Herman made a motion to adjourn to an Indian buffet”). This is adapted, as is every document you’ll find under the title header for this post, from Paul Brians‘ book Common Errors in English Usage (which you can access for free at Professor Brians’ Washington State University web page).
This is full page with a reading of two sentences and ten modified cloze exercises.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Dissertation (noun): A formal and extensive treatment of a subject, such as an academic thesis; treatise; earnest presentation of one’s opinion; discourse; explanation. Adjective: dissertational, dissertative; noun: dissertator; verb: dissert.
‘As the local landlady Signora Maura shows the young couple about the house they have just rented from her, she distracts their attention from the walls with a long dissertation on the gas meter.’ Gore Vidal, Matters of Fact and Fiction”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
For some reason, I have held back this Cultural Literacy worksheet on xenophobia for just the right moment; this blog is now ten years old, and so it goes without saying there have been a plethora of just the right moments since then.
This is a half-page document with a reading of one sentence and two comprehension questions. Just enough to help student understand the social and economic implications and costs of this particular phobia.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Felix Adler: (1851-1933) German-born American educator and leader in social welfare. Adler came to America as a youth, graduated from Columbia (1870), and pursued further studies in Germany. He founded the New York Society of Ethical Culture in 1876, from which a worldwide movement later developed. The society emphasized the need for a stronger morality (apart from any single theological dogma) in all personal, professional, and political relationships and placed great importance on the moral education of children. Adler established the first free kindergarten for New York City’s poor, which later grew into the first vocational school that combined manual training and ethical instruction in its curriculum. In 1884 Adler helped to establish the first Tenement House Commission; he arranged for trained nurses to visit the poor, lobbied for parks and playgrounds in depressed urban areas, and served for a time as chairman of the National Child Labor Committee. Adler advanced his view in such books as The Moral Instruction of Children (1892), An Ethical Philosophy of Life (1918), and The Reconstruction of the Spiritual Ideal (1923).”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
OK, here is the fourteenth lesson plan of the Introduction to Writing Sentences Unit, this one on using subordinating conjunctions to compose complex sentences. This Cultural Literacy worksheet on conjunctions opens this lesson, and bears some explaining. First: this is a full-page worksheet with a five-sentence reading and eight comprehension questions. In other words, this do-now may end up turning this lesson into a two-day affair. Why? Well, I think students, to be able to write well whatever the demands of their writing happen to be. And to handle increasingly complex ideas, one must be able to write increasingly complex sentences. Conjunctions–particularly the subordinating conjunctions addressed in this lesson–are key to writing complex sentences that convey complex ideas. So, I would argue, in defense of this do-now document that is really more of a lesson in itself, that this is the right opening for this lesson.
And here is the scaffolded worksheet on writing complex sentences that is the principal work of this lesson. Your students–and you–will probably benefit from this general learning support on conjunctions as well as this one specifically on subordinating conjunctions. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the lesson 14 worksheet to ease your cognitive load while delivering this lesson.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Dirt for Earth, Soil, or Gravel. A most disagreeable Americanism, discredited by general (and Presidential) use. ‘Make the dirt fly.’ Dirt means filth.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Here is a worksheet on the use of the adjective moral and the noun morale. This is a full-page document with a reading of two longish sentences and ten modified cloze exercises. Professor Paul Brians, from whose book Common Errors in English Usage this material is adapted (and to which he allows free access at his Washington State University web page), also nicely points out the pronunciation stresses in these words.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“remedial programs: Programs designed to address specific weaknesses for individuals who are not achieving up to grade-level expectations. Remedial programs take place outside the regular or general classroom and are typically tailored to individual needs. Remedial programs can also take place in clinics or private tutoring centers.
Remedial programs in public schools (such as resource room instruction) that are indicated on an individualized education program are free. Remediation of skills through intensive instruction and practice occurs in remedial programs.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on diction. This is a half-page worksheet with a three sentence reading and three comprehension questions. This is a good general introduction to the concept of diction, that is, word choice.
However, the third sentence comes with this warning: for struggling and emergent readers, this sentence will almost certainly need to be rewritten. If you look at the way the clauses are punctuated, breaking up this monster and making it comprehensible mostly does itself. As I prepared this post, I looked at this document and found, like some of these half-page worksheets, it looked a bit crowded. A revision might knock this into a full-page document, which would allow for some critical, brainstorming questions about diction.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
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