“Aryans: The people of the Rigveda, who invaded Iran and India from the northwest in the later 2nd millenium BC, By one theory they were responsible for the downfall of Indus Civilization. Their language was an early form of Sanskrit, the most easterly of the Indo-European tongues, but the use of their name to describe other Indo-European speakers is to be strongly deprecated.”
Excerpted from: Bray, Warwick, and David Trump. The Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology. New York: Penguin, 1984.
This lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “An 8-Cent Story” is the penultimate lesson in the first of the three Crime and Puzzlement units I wrote a couple of years ago.
This lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the American idiom “Curiosity Killed the Cat.” Here is the PDF of the reading and questions that drive the lesson; finally, here is the typescript of the answer key.
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.
“Aporia: An aporia is a puzzling condition or situation. The rhetorical application of aporia is to pretend to an inability or confess to an actual inability to resolve a problem or answer a question. One might say of a political figure whom one was attacking, ‘I don’t know what he lost first, his ability to tell the truth from a lie or his ability to behave morally.’ The device is often used when the question is being begged. A homely version of it is the often-heard comment ‘How can people be so stupid’ uttered when something the speaker disapproves of has just happened.”
Excerpted from: Trail, George Y. Rhetorical Terms and Concepts: A Contemporary Glossary. New York: Harcourt Brace, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference
Moving right along on this warm and oddly muggy December afternoon, here is a reading on the atom bomb 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.
“Britannicus: (original name Claudius Tiberius Germanicus, c AD 41-55) Son of Messalina and the emperor Claudius I, heir apparent to the throne. Through the scheming of his mother, Agrippina, he was denied succession to the throne. It is believed that Nero, his half brother, poisoned Britannicus at a banquet. The name Britannicus was given to him by the senate because the conquest of Britain took place at about the time of his birth. He is the subject of a tragedy (1669) by Racine.”
“Britannicus: A tragedy by Racine. The material of the play is derived from Tacitus. Smitten with Junia, the beloved of his half brother Britannicus, the emperor Nero attempts to win her; unsuccessful, he causes Britannicus to be arrested and poisons him. Junia escapes from the palace and becomes a vestal virgin. The play abounds in political subplots and marks Racine’s first challenge of Corneille on the older playwright’s home ground: political drama.
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged drama/theater, readings/research
Because they came up frequently in various social studies classes I co-taught in New York City, I wrote these two context clues worksheets on the noun heretic and the adjective heretical. I was going to comment that I probably should have written another one on the noun heresy, but a glance in the folder that holds all these documents reveals I already did–it’s under that link.
It’s hard to imagine students understanding religious history, and particularly the history of the Roman Catholic Church.
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.
[I think this Wikipedia article on Barbara Pym will provide some much needed context to this particular literary travesty.]
“An Unsuitable Attachment (1963)
Novels like (this), despite their qualities, are getting increasingly difficult to sell.
The Sweet Dove Died (1978)
Not the kind of thing to which people are turning.”
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Here is a word root worksheet on the Latin word roots terr, terra, and terri. These three roots, which mean both earth and land, are very productive in English–you may even have a terrarium in your home or classroom.
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.
“An arched ceiling of roof constructed of masonry. Simplest is a barrel vault or tunnel vault, which is semicircular in section. Two intersecting barrel vaults of equal size form a groin vault. Rib vaulting employs reinforced ribs at the intersections.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Okay, Friday has rolled around again, and it is the end of a momentous week for this author. To make a long story short, I now own a car for the first time in almost 17 years.
This week’s Text, from my ongoing endeavor to write a couple of units on the art of argumentation and the craft of composing a synthetic research paper, is a complete lesson plan on the art of quoting in a paper. I wrote this context clues worksheet on criterion and criteria, which are, respectively, a singular and a plural noun, specifically for this lesson. As I look at this document today, I realize that depending on how one deals with it, and who one is teaching, that this worksheet could stand on its own as a lesson (and I have one on datum and data in the works). Finally, here is the worksheet that is at the center of this lesson and affords students an opportunity to try their hands directly at quoting within a larger body of text.
That’s it! It’s Friday the 13th, so step lightly and carefully.
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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