Monthly Archives: January 2026

Rotten Reviews: A Joseph Heller Omnibus

We Bombed in New Haven

“A dud of the first magnitude…”

Saturday Review

Something Happened

“…surely it’s time to declare a moratorium on brain-damaged children used as metaphors for mental and emotional decay.”

Library Journal 

Good as Gold

“…a self-indulgent ventilation of private spleen…Heller operates as if he were a jewel thief wearing boxing gloves.”

Newsweek

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

Common English Verbs Followed by an Object and an Infinitive: Tell

Here is a worksheet on the verb tell when used with an object and an infinitive.

Every day, the professor tells his students to take notes during the lecture.

Doctors tell their patients to take their medications on time.

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: Socializing Intelligence

“socializing intelligence: The expectation that students can be taught to think intelligently by developing ‘habits of mind’ to solve problems, not just to stockpile tidbits of knowledge.”

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

Cultural Literacy: Status

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on status; as you know, and as this worksheet will help your students understand, “status” is the “relative position of an individual within a group, or of a group within a society.” It strikes me as a timely topic in a democracy under threat.

This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and three comprehension questions.

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.

Concepts in Sociology: Action Research

“action research: Conventional social science research is concerned to describe, analyze and explain phenomena. The role of the researcher is detached, in order to minimize disturbance of the phenomena under investigation. In action research, however, the research role is involved and interventionist, because research is joined with action in order to plan, implement and monitor change. Researchers become participants in planned policy initiatives and use their knowledge and research expertise to serve a client organization.”

Excerpted from: Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner. Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Penguin, 2006.

The Weekly Text, 9 January 2025: The Writing Revolution Templates III; Outlining Forms

This week’s Text is the third array of templates–these for outlining–derived from the framework of Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler’s The Writing Revolution (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017). Here is the table of contents for the outlining templates in this tranche of documents. Please forgive the long file name(s). I am publishing a large number of things right now, and I’d like users to be able to keep track of them with ease. In any event, you can rename these–or even rewrite them–as they are all formatted in Microsoft Word for ease of revision, reformatting, and general manipulation.

III-A*Single-Paragraph Outline

III-B*Combined Outline

III-C* Transition Outline (Two Paragraphs)

III-D*Transtion Outline (Three Paragraphs)

III-E*Single Paragraph Outine (Book Report)

III-F*Multiple-Paragraph Outline (Three Paragraphs)

III-G*Multiple-Paragraph Outline (Four Paragraphs)

III-H*Multiple Paragraph Outline (Five Paragraphs)

III-I.Multiple-Paragraph Outline (Book Report)

III-J*The Match Game–Which Details Go with Which Topic Sentence?

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.