Yearly Archives: 2020

Term of Art: Indirect Speech

indirect speech: The reporting of something said, thought, etc. with deictic and other units adapted to the viewpoint of the reporter. E.g. He said he would bring them might report a promise, originally expressed by the utterance ‘I will bring them in.’ But the person who made the promise is someone other than the reporter; hence, in the reporting, original I is changed to he. Also the promise was earlier than the report; hence, in addition, will is changed to would. With these adaptations, he would bring them is an example of, and is said to be ‘in,’ indirect speech.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

A Lesson Plan on the Decibel Scale from The Order of Things

This lesson plan on the decibel scale and its accompanying reading and comprehension worksheet are another of the 50 lessons I have prepared using text from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s The Order of Things. If you have students interested in audio engineering or music production, this is something for them.

Otherwise, this is a simple literacy lesson that calls upon students to work with numbers and words in one document. I’ve been working on both the unit plan for these lessons and a user’s manual for their documents. I struggle to articulate why I developed these lessons and how I would use them. For now, think of the documents above as a rehearsal for word problems in math–one of the things that so often bedevil emergent and struggling readers.

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.

Rotten Reviews: Giles Goat-Boy by John Barth

“…a pervasive silliness that turns finally—if one must bring up the university image—into college humor, a kind of MAD magazine joke.”

Christian Science Monitor 

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.    

Nuance (n)

If you listen to the general day-to-day discourse in our society, particularly political discourse, you have probably noticed that while it is often forthrightly counterfactual and mendacious, it is also coarse and myopic. For that reason, I offer this context clues worksheet on the noun nuance. Everybody should know this abstract noun and the concept it represents–you know, subtlety, shades of meaning, thoughtfulness, and the gradations of the analysis that follow these approaches to understanding something deeply.

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.

Write It Right: Back of for Behind, At the Back of

“Back of for Behind, At the Back of. ‘Back of law is force.’”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

Cultural Literacy: Nihilism

If you can use it (I didn’t fully understand the concept until I was well into my undergraduate education), here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on nihilism as a concept in philosophy, which is this word’s function at bottom–to dress up an abstract concept like a belief in nothing. You might want to help your students make the connection with the Latin word root nihil, which means, simply, nothing.

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.

Term of Art: Subordinate Clause

“Subordinate Clause: A clause dependent on the main clause in a sentence. After we finish our work, we will go out to dinner.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

Word Root Exercise: Cede, Ceed, Cess

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word roots cede, ceed, and cess. They mean to go and to yield. However, the words that stem from these roots, which are extremely productive in English, like proceed, precede, and succeed point up the necessity of an adverbial question, e.g. to go when and where? To yield when and where? 

Those kinds of questions will help students arrive on their own at the fundamental meaning of these roots.

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.

Book of Answers: The First Book Printed in English

“What was the first book printed in English? The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, a prose romance by Raoul Lefevre, printed by William Caxton in 1474 in Bruges, Belgium. Caxton himself translated it from the French. Caxton also printed the first dated book printed in English, Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers, published on November 18, 1477.”

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Expressionism

Readers and users of this blog are already aware that I have published here a great deal of reference material related to the visual and plastic arts. I’m well aware that I’m not the only person to decry the decline of arts education in our public schools. I’m not an artist myself–I cannot draw a straight line without the aid of solid straight edge to guide my writing instrument–but I love art and believe kids should learn about it–if not learn to create art themselves.

In that spirit, here is a reading on expressionism 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.