“How were critics Mark and Carl Van Doren related? They were brothers. Both were members of the faculty of Columbia University. Carl from 1911 to 1930 and Mark from 1920 to 1959.”
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
This isn’t a political blog, but if you followed the news on the national convention (or the convention itself) of one of the major political parties in the United States last month, you’ll understand why I think it’s time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on nepotism.
Incidentally, I doubt that there are many teachers in this country who haven’t attended a professional development day in which the importance of critical thinking was discussed. As Daniel Willingham asked in an article for the American Federation of Teachers’ magazine American Educator, “Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?” The answer is complicated, but a summary would go something like this: critical thinking is a complicated cognitive act involving, among other things, using a rich fund of prior knowledge and conceptual vocabulary to think synthetically in order to understand new and unexpected circumstances and things.
Nepotism, I’ll argue here, is one of those conceptually rich terms that gives students the cognitive tools to evaluate and navigate a variety of situations in educational institutions, workplaces, governments, and bureaucracies. It can also equip them to understand why–and yes, develop a critical understanding of why–institutions, businesses and governments develop inertia and dysfunction. In a time when our periodicals and television news channels carry daily news about toxic workplaces characterized by cliquish incompetence, nepotism is a word students should know so they can understand its conceptual meaning and use it as a tool for assessment of the dismal workplaces in which so many of us spend our lives.
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.
“Article. A good and useful word, but used without meaning by shopkeepers; as, ‘A good article of vinegar,’ for a good vinegar.”
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, humor, literary oddities
It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, so here is a context clues worksheet on the verb encumber. It’s used only transitively, do don’t forget your direct objects after its use.
Incidentally, in addition to meaning, as it does in the worksheet above, “weight down, burden” and “to impede or hamper the function or activity of,” encumber can also mean “to burden with a legal claim (as a mortgage).” Thus, the noun encumbrance will show up in mortgage contracts. These are all good concepts and words for informed consumers (i.e. our students) to know.
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.
“Local Color: System of representing the color of an object which begins with its hue and adds shade or lightness by the addition of black or white pigment to give a more naturalistic appearance. Pure or shaded local color was used almost exclusively until the late 19th century, when the Impressionists discovered that the brain blends contrasting hues into vibrant impressions of actual color.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
It was one of the Words of the Day I marked down when I was out for a short vacation last week, and it’s a good word used regularly in conversational English, so here is context clues worksheet on the noun heyday if you can 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.
“All of Those Words, in denominations of from three to five letters, are present.”
Library Journal
“The novelist who doesn’t like meanings writes an allegory; the allegory means that men should not mean but be. Ods bodkins. The reviewer looks at the evidence and wonders if he should damn the author and praise the book, or praise the author and damn the book. And is it possible, somehow or other to praise or damn, both? He isn’t sure.”
Reed Whittemore, New Republic
“At times Henderson is too greyly overcast with thought to be more than a dun Quixote.”
Time
“There is no effort toward decency—many of the conversations that come back to Herzog are foul-mouthed, and his own sexual actions and reminiscences are unrestrained.
America
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 fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
Alright, before it gets too hot to occupy this room, here is an English usage worksheet on differentiating the use of shall and will. It’s straightforward and should take only minutes to complete.
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.
“Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.”
“On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences” (1854)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged science literacy
Here is a reading on Socrates, history’s first teacher, and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet: this is a core reading in all four of the common branch subjects, and a way of thinking about teaching and learning, for students’ and teachers’ edification.
Incidentally, if you’ve been hanging with William “Bill” S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan, as it was my mild misfortune to do over the Labor Day weekend, this Greek philosopher’s name is not pronounced “So-Crates” but rather sock-ruh-tease. Just sayin’.
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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