Category Archives: English Language Arts

This category contains domain-specific material–reading and writing expository prose, interpreting literature etc.–designed to meet the Common Core standards in English language arts while at the same time being flexible enough to meet the needs of diverse and idiosyncratic learners.

Term of Art: Spatial-Material Organizational Disorder

“spatial-material organizational disorder: A problem with organizing materials so that the child constantly struggles for survival within an ordered environment.

A child with this problem has a hard time organizing information on pater. Margins are missing, spacing between words and letters is incorrect, centering is difficult, and the overall appearance of the work is messy. Teachers often have trouble reading the child’s work. Often, a child with this problem forgets assignments or books needed to complete assignments. Assignments themselves may be incomplete, or the child cannot find completed assignments.

In addition, a child with this problem is often disorganized and has problems following routines or completing tasks. Desk and home environment are usually messy and disorganized, although the child may appear to have his own system of organization in his own space.”

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

Word Root Exercise: Inter-

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word root inter. It means between and among. As you have no doubt already recognized, this is an extremely productive root in English, growing such high-frequency words as interfere, intercept, and interim (all present in this document), among many others. Inter should not be confused with intra and intro, which mean within, inward, inside, and into (a worksheet on which is forthcoming).

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.

Rotten Reviews: Love and Death in the American Novel

“The author can’t win, ever, by Fiedler’s standard of judgement. Only the critic can win…there is more in American fiction, much more, than Fiedler has been able to find.”

Malcolm Cowley, New York Times Book Review

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

Vocation (n)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun vocation. It means, at least for the purposes of this worksheet, “a summons or strong inclination to a particular state or course of action.” But, since I wrote this document, I distantly recall, because I served a student interested in entering the priesthood, and as the second sentence on this document implies, two secondary, quite common, meanings of this word are “a divine call to the religious life” and “an entry into the priesthood or a religious order.”

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.

Isometric Projection

“Isometric Projection: In architectural drawing, a means of showing a building in three dimensions without foreshortening. The horizontal lines are usually drawn at a thirty-degree angle, the vertical lines are parallel, and all lines are drawn to scale.”

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

Otis Elevator

Here is a reading on the Otis Elevator company with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As usual, David S. Kidder and Noah Oppenheim, the editors of the Intellectual Devotional series, ably synthesized Elisha Otis’s biography (he was, to my surprise, a farm boy from Halifax, Vermont) with the changes his invention wrought in American life–and in a one-page reading (!).

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.

Book of Answers: Where the Wild Things Are

“What is the name of the little boy who goes to the country of the Wild Things in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are? Max.”

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

The Weekly Text, 2 December 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Westward Ho-Hum!”

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the the Crime and Puzzlement case “Westward Ho-Hum!” I open this lesson with this half-page Cultural Literacy worksheet (with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions) on the Gallicism esprit de corps. To fortify this document with a bit of context, Merriam-Webster defines this noun as denoting “the common spirit existing in the members of a group and inspiring enthusiasm, devotion, and strong regard for the honor of the group.”

To investigate this case, your students will need this PDF of the illustration and questions that serve as both evidence and procedure of inquiry into this heinous crime. Finally, to solve your case and apprehend a suspect, here is the typescript of the answer key.

And that’s it for this week. I hope you and yours enjoyed a relaxed and (if this is your bent), suitably gluttonous Thanksgiving.

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.

Write It Right: Collateral Descendant

“Collateral Descendant. There can be none: a ‘collateral descendant‘ is not a descendant.

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

Common Errors in English Usage: Him, Her, and He, She

From Paul Brians’ highly useful book Common Errors in English Usage, here is a worksheet on the pronouns him, her, he, and she. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of a carefully explanatory paragraph and ten modified cloze exercises. Essentially, this is a worksheet on pronouns and case, dealing with the nominative and objective cases, but not the possessive, in English pronoun declension.

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.