Yearly Archives: 2020

Triumphal Arch

“Triumphal Arch: Originating in Rome by the 2nd century B.C., these freestanding monumental gateways were erected to commemorate victorious generals. Sometimes serving as city gates, these arches were often merely decorative and richly adorned with sculptural elements. The two main types include one with a single archway and another flanked with smaller arches to the sides. The triumphal arch form was popularized anew during the Italian Renaissance.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

A Lesson Plan on Developmental Delay

Now that I’ve written it, I am having a hard time imagining where I will use this lesson plan on developmental delay. If you can use it, here are the short reading and vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that drive this lesson. If you’d like a slightly longer version (more vocabulary words, and three more questions) of these documents, you can find them here.

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.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter: A novel (1940) by Carson McCullers (1917-1967) of the ‘Southern grotesque’ school. It features a deaf-mute, to whom the other main characters wrongly attribute the faculty of inner serenity that they lack. The title is from the poem ‘The Lonely Hunter’ (1896) by Fiona Macleod (pen-name of William Sharp; 1855-1905):

My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.

 A rather pale film version (1968) was directed by Robert Ellis Miller.

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

Cultural Literacy: Aborigines

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on aborigines probably ought to be paired with context clues worksheet on the adjective aboriginal so that students understand that these words are not isolated to the First Nation people of Australia, where this word is commonly used, but refers to the first inhabitants of any nation–be it the United States or Russia, or what have you….

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.

George Bernard Shaw on Bourgeois Morality

“Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak of expensive vices.”

George Bernard Shaw

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

Oddball Place Names

This list of oddball place names never failed to bring laughter to my classroom when I taught an advisory at a middle school in the North Bronx.

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: Indirect Object

indirect object: An object whose semantic role is characteristically that of a recipient, e.g. to your sister in He blew a kiss to your sister; also, in most accounts, your sister in He blew your sister a kiss. Distinguished as an element in a ditransitive construction from a direct object.

The relation between sentences such as these has been described in terms of dative movement. It is in part because that relation is possible that to your sister can be distinguished, as an object, from directional phrases such as to the seaside as in He sent his family to the seaside.”

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

A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Stradegy”

One way to introduce students to Antonio Stradivari and his prized musical instruments would be by way of this lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Stradegy.”

I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Hit Below the Belt.” Here is the PDF of the illustration and questions that drive the investigation. 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.

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz on Evolution

 “The eye of the trilobite tells us that the sun shone on the beach where he lived; for there is nothing in nature without a purpose, and when so complicated an organ was made to receive the light, there must have been light to enter it.”

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz

Geological Sketches (1866)

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

A Lesson Plan on Alcohol

Here’s a lesson plan on alcohol. This short reading and this vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet comprise the work for this unit. If you’d like a slightly longer, and therefore more in-depth, set of these documents, click here and you’ll get to them.

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.