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.

Common Errors in English Usage: Graffiti (n)

From Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage (to which he allows no-cost access on the Washington State University website), here is an English usage worksheet on the noun graffiti. The mild irony here, of course, is that graffiti is an Italian noun, and a plural at that; the singular is graffito. In any case, the worksheet consists of a relatively short (four sentences) reading passage with ten modified cloze exercises.

This is not a vital area of usage, but the worksheet does supply students with an opportunity to do usage analysis, which is more or less the point of these worksheets–and the meet the standard (see “English Usage” in the About Posts & Texts page on this blog, which you can reach by clicking on that title on the masthead of the site) that animated them in the first place.

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.

Biedermeier

“Biedermeier: The German and Austrian form of Empire Style, ca. 1815-1848, especially in furniture and articles of interior decoration. Extended to those paintings of the Romantic period that depict subjects favored by the middle class. The term is not applicable to architecture or sculpture.”

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

Word Root Exercise: Flori

Here is a worksheet on the Latin root flori. As you probably know, because you have probably visited a florist at least once in your life, this productive root in English (it gives us, in addition to florist, flora, efflorescence and its verb effloresce, as well as the relatively commonly used adjective florid) means flower.

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: Strategy Instruction

“strategy instruction: An important educational approach to working with students with a learning disability. It is based on an assumption that individuals with learning disabilities have significant deficits in the area of strategy development. These deficits may be the result of underlying language disabilities and skills deficits, or of problems in acquiring executive procedures and learning strategies.

In any case, a strategy instruction approach assumes that explicit instruction in learning strategies and executive procedures is a fundamental approach to helping students with learning disabilities achieve their potential.

Strategy instruction typically involves teaching procedures like SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review). Students learn to perform a sequence of specific activities geared toward a specific task and outcome, practice those procedures in a variety of contexts, and apply them independently.

Strategy instruction has proven effective, particularly in college situations where it allows students to meet course requirements independently.”

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

Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts

While I concede that this reading on Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet may not have compelling utility in our mostly arts-free schools, here they are nonetheless.

I’m old enough to remember the broadcasts of Maestro Bernstein–who was an eminent figure in the American Culture of my youth–and his Young People’s Concerts. The New York Philharmonic, then as now, stood as one of the world’s great orchestras. I can’t say these television shows inculcated a lifelong love of classical music in me, but they did introduce me to it and help me understand it. Fortunately, Wynton Marsalis, a figure as vital to American culture as Leonard Bernstein, continues the tradition of introducing young people to a genuinely American art form with his “Jazz for Young People” concerts. Mr. Marsalis leads the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, perhaps the greatest large ensemble playing jazz these days.

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: Idea for Thought, Purpose, Expectation, etc

“Idea for Thought, Purpose, Expectation, etc. ‘I had no idea that it was so cold.’ ‘When he went abroad it was with no idea of remaining.'”

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

Scavenger (n)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun scavenger. I can’t remember why I wrote this, but it may have been because I had students who were hearing and seeing the words used in a biology class of some sort and couldn’t quite get their minds around it. I dimly recall debating whether or not to write for the noun or the verb–scavenge. If that’s the word better suited to the needs of your classroom, this Microsoft Word document is easy enough to convert to the verb.

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.

The Algonquin Wits: Heywood Broun on the Fouling of Public Places

“Discussing boorishness in public places, especially where ‘ermined’ or ‘sabled’ ladies make concentration somewhat difficult, Broun remarked, ‘I want some day to see a Broadway opening without benefit of footnotes. I’d rather not be told by the lady just ahead that a line is “delicious” or “so quaint.” I’d rather be surprised.’”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

The Weekly Text, 22 October 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Water Bed”

This week’s Text is a on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Water Bed.” I begin this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Latinism caveat emptor. As you probably know, this locution means “let the buyer beware.” However, in everyday discourse one will often hear someone say “there is a caveat” or “there are several caveats” in any given situation. Caveat by itself means (by  Merriam-Webster’s reckoning) “a warning enjoining one from certain acts or practices.” All of this is a roundabout way of saying that caveat emptor in particular, and caveat in general, are arguable words high school students should know by their graduation.

Anyway, you’ll need this PDF scan of the illustration and questions related to the evidence in this case to investigate it. And here is the answer key to solve the case and bring your culprit to the bar of justice.

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.

Nominalization

“Nominalization: 1. The process or result of forming a noun from a word belonging to another word class: writing/writings and shaving/shavings derived from write and shave and adding -ing; sanity derived from sane by the addition of the noun-forming suffix -ity; nominalization derived from nominalize by adding -ation. 2. The process or result of deriving a noun phrase by a transformation from a finite clause: their rejecting my complaint or their rejection of my complaint from They rejected my complaint.”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.