Monthly Archives: July 2022

Term of Art: Visual Motor Skills

Posted on July 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

“visual motor skills: A subcategory of perceptual motor skills involving the ability to translate information received by sight into a physical response. In education, visual motor skills are often used when copying information from a blackboard or reproducing letters or numbers. Individuals with problems in this area often have poor handwriting, and may also have more subtle and pervasive difficulties in school performance.”

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

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Word Root Exercise: Spor/o, Spori

Posted on July 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

Moving along this morning, here is a worksheet on the Greek word roots spor/o and spori. These mean spore and to sow. What does one sow? Why seeds, of course, and even though that doesn’t turn up so simply as the definition in the standard lexicon of Mark’s Text Terminal, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, a spore is basically a seed.

Anyway, this root sprouts such scientific nouns as sporophyll, sporozoan, and zoospore.

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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The Doubter’s Companion: Absolute

Posted on July 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Absolute: Nothing is absolute, with the debatable exception of this statement and death, which may explain why political and economic theories are presented so seriously.

Absolutism is a deadly serious business. If even a hair’s breadth of space is left around the edges of a theory, doubt may be able to squeeze through. The citizen may then begin to smile and wonder whether the intellectual justifications of power are really nonsense. Few within the expert elites see themselves as ideologues and yet they quite happily act as carriers of truth in whatever their field.

Whether it reveals the dictatorship of the proletariat or the virtues of privatization, truth is ideology. Not their truths, our elites say. They are simply delivering the inevitable conclusions of facts rationally organized. Absolutism is the weakness of others. Our elites have the good fortune simply to be right.”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

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Cultural Literacy: Separation of Church and State

Posted on July 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

Given the zeitgeist, particularly as defined by the current Supreme Court of the United States, now seems like a good time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of the separation of church and state. This is a full-page document with a reading of five sentences, two of them longish compounds, and seven comprehension questions. The reading does a nice job of explaining the ambiguity of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (which I, like other First Amendment absolutists, I expect, wish weren’t there) without ever mentioning the term.

So there might be a way of turning this document into something of a treasure hunt for the term “Establishment Clause.” Or something else entirely.

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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Fable

Posted on July 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Fable: A short tale, usually epigrammatic, with animals, men, gods, and even inanimate objects as characters. The action of a fable illustrates a moral which is usually (but not always) explicitly stated at the end. This moral often attains the force of a proverb. The fable form appears early in man’s cultural development, being a common part of the oral folk literature of primitive tribes. It appeared in Egyptian papyri of c1500 BC, and in Greece a recognizable fable was included in the works of Hesiod in the 8th century BC. By far the most famous fables are those attributed to Aesop, a Greek slave who lived about 600 BC. In India the fable also appeared early, the great Indian collection, the Panchatantra, having been composed in the 3rd century. Modern fables have been dominated by the genius and style of La Fontaine, the great French fabulist of the 17th century, who wrote fables in polished and witty poetry that have been widely translated and imitated.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Confabulate (vi)

Posted on July 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb confabulate. It’s used only intransitively–so you don’t need a direct object here. For the purposes of the context the sentences in this document imply, this verb means “to fill in gaps in memory by fabrication.” However, it can also mean “to talk informally (chat),” and “to hold a discussion (confer).”

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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Au Contraire

Posted on July 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Au Contraire To the contrary, quite the opposite.

‘Nor can it be said that they produce canvases of any greater than those to be found along Washington Square, or in the cold-water flats of New York’s lower east side. There is, au contraire, more than a little truth to the contention that the east side has a certain edge over Montparnasse, and this in spite of the justly renowned Paris light.’ James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Common English Verbs Followed by Gerunds: Dispute

Posted on July 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

Finally this morning, here is a worksheet on the verb dispute when it is used with a gerund. I dispute sneezing in the soup enhances its flavor.

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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Term of Art: Teaching for Understanding

Posted on July 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

“teaching for understanding: A pedagogical method that focuses on teaching students to understand new concepts rather than memorize discrete facts. Although this term has been used to refer specifically to deep, meaningful learning, it’s really the goal of all instruction: all teachers want their students to understand, not just recall and recite, whatever was taught.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Word Root Exercise: Tract

Posted on July 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word root tract. It means draw and pull. You will recognize this as a particularly productive root in English: attract, contract, detract, extract, and retract all grow from this root, and all are included in this document (and I haven’t mentioned distract–to pull attention away from–which is not on this worksheet).

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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