“Action for Act. ‘In wrestling, a blow is a reprehensible action.’ A blow is not an action but an act. An action may consist of many acts.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage
Over the years I worked with struggling learners in New York City’s schools, I always counted among the students on my rosters a complement of English language learners. Observing them across time, I noticed that all but a very few struggled with idioms from American English. Idioms are, arguably, one of the most difficult if not the most difficult figures of speech to master: they are not literal, and as abstractions they are difficult to interpret because they don’t bear any resemblance in most cases to the concept they describe and represent.
Which is why, when I started using E.D. Hirsch and Joseph F. Kett’s book, The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, I wrote up worksheets on American idioms and attached them as short, do-now exercises (they take five to ten minutes at the beginning of a class period and help with transitions between classes) to as many of the lessons as I could.
So, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on “Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth”. This is still, I think, a very commonly used idiom, and is easy to explain conceptually, which will help students make the jump from the figurative to the literal and back again on this worksheet, and, this teacher hopes, to many of the other of its type I have posted and will post over time.
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.
“What hotel threw out newlyweds F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre? The Biltmore Hotel in New York City, following their wedding on April 3, 1920. The management asked them to leave because of their unseemly behavior.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
If you can use it, here is a context clues worksheet on the noun quirk. This is a common enough word that high school students should know it. Put another way, adolescence tends to be a time of personal quirks, so this is a useful, arguably vital, word for teenagers.
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.
“The most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life.”
Samuel Pepys, Diary
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, humor, literary oddities
Several years ago I became interested in the Trivium both as a concept and as a potential framework for a unit, in this case a unit on writing. I actually began developing the unit, put together the first three lessons, and offered it as a special institute class at the high school in which I was serving. Ultimately, alas, I was unable to bring the unit to fruition due to institutional disinterest.
When I arrived at the school in which I presently serve, I noticed that the English teachers required in writing assignments that students use the rhetorical moves of ethos, pathos, and logos to argue their case. Since rhetoric is one of the three subjects in the trivium–logic and grammar are the others–I found this interesting.
Which is why I developed this learning support on ethos, logos, and pathos in case the students in my literacy classroom needed it. Unfortunately, I was never able to use it.
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.
“Magnum Opus: A great work of art or literature, especially a writer’s culminating and greatest achievement; masterpiece. Plural: magna opera, magnum opuses,
‘It was the magnum opus of a fat spoiled rich boy who could write like an angel about landscape and like an adolescent about people.’ Norman Mailer, Cannibals and Christians”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Some years ago, I oversaw a credit-recovery class over summer, and one of the most frequently failed courses that year was health. I developed a number of supplemental materials for the inadequate corporate software the school used for his endeavor. I’ll start posting them here occasionally.
Here, then, is a reading on white blood cells and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
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.
“Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion
The other night I watched “A Man for All Seasons” for the umpteenth time. Naturally, I started thinking about Henry VIII. So yesterday afternoon when I stumbled across this independent practice worksheet on Henry VIII I pulled it out for publication.
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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