Monthly Archives: October 2019

Term of Art: Orthographic Awareness

Posted on October 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

“orthographic awareness: An individual’s command of the sound-letter relationship,. As children learn to write, their approaches to spelling change as they become more aware of sounds and letters. In the beginning, children often spell very simply (such as ‘bt’ for ‘boat’). As they get older they may apply conventions of spelling but still misspell (‘bote’ for ‘boat’).

With more exposure to written language, as they become more proficient readers and learn specific spelling patterns, young writers begin to apply more sophisticated spelling patterns (‘boat’ for ‘boat’). Individuals with learning disabilities who have underdeveloped orthographic awareness often have problems with spelling.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

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Patriarch (n)

Posted on October 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

OK! It’s Friday again, and a in-service half-day in this district to boot. Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun patriarch. I can’t remember why I wrote this in the first place (there is, elsewhere on Mark’s Text Terminal, a worksheet on the Latin roots pat and patri, which probably ought to have sufficed for this), but I do think it’s a word high schoolers ought to know.

All of these words mean something related to father, incidentally.

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.

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Amber

Posted on October 24, 2019 | Leave a comment

“amber: Fossilized pine resin. It was much appreciated in antiquity not only for its beauty but for its supposed magical properties–of attracting small particles when warmed and rubbed. The major source in Europe is along the southeast coast of the Baltic and North Sea, and minor ones in even in southeast Europe. However, the distribution of finds strongly supports the view that there was an important trade in amber following specific routes up the Elbe and Vistula, across the upper Danube to the Brenner Pass, and so down to the Adriatic and the countries bordering it. Other objects and ideas travelled by the same route, which made it an important factor in European prehistory. The trade began in the Early Bronze Age but expanded greatly as a result of the Mycenaeans’ interest. Even Britain was brought into this trading area, as witnessed by amber spacer plates in barrows of the Wessex Culture. Later, amber was very popular with the Iron Age peoples of Italy, particularly the Picenes.

Excerpted from: Bray, Warwick, and David Trump. The Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology. New York: Penguin, 1984.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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Two Learning Supports on Abbreviations and Symbols

Posted on October 24, 2019 | Leave a comment

While I don’t mean to say that the method doesn’t have universal application–it does, and I think it’s probably the best way to build literacy, particularly in procedural knowledge of English prose–I think Hochman and Wexler’s The Writing Revolution curriculum might have particularly effective application in the school in which I presently serve.

So, I have returned to working up some new curriculum for social studies base on it. This morning I made two learning supports, the first one on abbreviations and the second one on symbols. Both documents are in Microsoft Word (as is just everything here at Mark’s Text Terminal), so you can alter them to your students’ needs.

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.

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Joseph Louis Lagrange on Antoine Lavoisier

Posted on October 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

“[Remark the day after the guillotining of the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier on 8 May 1794]: ‘Il ne leur a fallu qu’un moment pour faire tomber cette tete, et cent annees, peut-etre, ne suffiront pas pour en reproduire une semblable.’

It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but it is unlikely that a hundred years will suffice to reproduce a similar one.”

Joseph Louis Lagrange

Quoted int J.B. Delambre, “Eloge de Lagrange,” Memoires de l’Institut (1812)

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Artificial Sweeteners

Posted on October 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

OK, to wrap up on this cool, autumnal morning in southwestern Vermont, here is a reading on artificial sweeteners and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it.

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.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Posted on October 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

“A cult radio serial by Douglas Adams (1952-2001), broadcast in 1978 and 1979. The story begins with the imminent destruction of Earth to make way for a hyperspace express route, and the escape of Earthling Arthur Dent and his exterrestrial friend Ford Prefect by hitching a ride on a Vogon spacecraft. The programme combined the comic with the surreal and introduced a host of eccentric characters. In 1981 the serial was adapted for television. The fictional book mentioned in the title gives handy tips to space travellers, and is frequently quoted; its verdict on the Earth is ‘mostly harmless.’ It transpires that the Earth was originally constructed to solve the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, to which the answer turns out to be 42.

Adams went on to adapt and extend the idea in book form, characteristically producing a “trilogy in five parts’: A Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984), and Mostly Harmless (1992).”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Outlandish (adjective)

Posted on October 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

OK, moving right along, here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective outlandish.  This word is in common enough use in the vernacular that students should probably know 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.

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How Confusing Is the Mapping in English?

Posted on October 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

“The principle may not come naturally, but surely we could make the particulars easier. If you were creating an alphabet for English from scratch, you would probably create 44 letters and match each speech sound with one letter. We’d call that one-to-one matching. Written English, alas, was not created from scratch. Our language is a mongrel: Germanic origins, heavily influenced by the Norman invasion and later by the adoption of Greek and Latinate words. That’s a problem because when we borrowed words, we frequently retained the spelling conventions of the original language. The result is that English uses a many-to-many matching. One letter (or letter combination) can signify many sounds, as the letter ‘e’ does: red, flower, bee.”

Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel T. The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Lesson Plans, Quotes, Reference

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Word Root Exercise: Gyn/o, Gyne, and Gynec/o

Posted on October 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

OK, let’s begin the week with this worksheet on the Greek roots gyn/o, gyne, and gynec/o. If you know the words gynecologist (or perhaps an even more timely word, misogynist), then you know that these roots mean “woman” and “female.”

Once again, any student with an eye on a career on healthcare will need to know this root and the many medical words that spring from 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.

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