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.

Will Rogers on the Advance of Civilization

Posted on July 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

“You can’t say civilization isn’t advancing; in every war they kill you in a new way.”

Will Rogers

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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Cultural Literacy: The Burr-Hamilton Duel

Posted on July 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton in 1804. It is a key event in the early history of the United States; this half-page worksheet, with three questions, serves only as the briefest introduction to the event itself.

If you know only a little bit about this event, as I do, you know enough to understand that there is a professionally, politically and socially fraught backstory to it. Burr and Hamilton had been antagonizing each other for years, and the duel was in many respects the logical culmination of this conflict. I would think this affair would provide just the right kind of interesting challenge to an engaged and enterprising high school student preparing a research paper to satisfy requirements in the advanced grades.

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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Bait and Switch

Posted on July 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Bait and Switch (adjective): Describing or pertaining to advertising that offers a product insincerely, with the true intention being to sell another, more expensive or profitable product.

‘Ads that deceive or claims that can’t be backed are no-nos, and techniques such as “bait and switch” in which goods are offered to lure customers to buy higher-priced substitutes are also verboten.’ Bernice Kanner, New York Daily News”

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

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Fraud (n)

Posted on July 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun fraud. When I found this straggler in the warehouse, I wondered why I wouldn’t have composed a companion document on, at the very least, fraudulent, if not the transitive verb defraud.

As it happens, I did write one on the former, but not the latter. Given the state of society and culture, defraud is a word students ought to have in their vocabulary. So, if you’re interested, be on the lookout for one in these pages.

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: Thematic Maturity

Posted on July 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

“thematic maturity: The sophistication of writing. Plot development, sentence structure, and cohesion based on an individual’s age and grade are some elements that are considered in evaluating thematic maturity.”

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

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Common Errors in English Usage: Turn Into, Turn In To

Posted on July 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on differentiating the use of turn into and turn in to. Like the other 100 or so of these I will post or already have posted, the text for this document is excerpted from Paul Brians’ handy usage guide, which he has posted online in its entirety–under this link–Common Errors in English Usage.

This is an area of usage that it will serve students very well, in life and work, to know. The worksheet is scaffolded, with five modified cloze exercises, then a blank field on which students may try their hands at extemporaneously writing sentences using these two verb phrases–or phrasal verbs, really.

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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Gothic Revival

Posted on July 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Gothic Revival: A picturesque style of architectural and decoration of the 19th century which incorporated adaptations of medieval gothic elements. In architecture, asymmetrical design, verticality, steeply pitched, gabled roofs, and much ornate tracery-derived ornament are seen.”

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

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Boethius

Posted on July 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on Boethius along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Like a good deal of the biographical material on philosophers, and expositions of philosophical concepts, from the Intellectual Devotional series, I wrote this for one student. Boethius was born in 477, the year after the Fall of Rome. He is best known for his book The Consolation of Philosophy. Did you know that the popular game show Wheel of Fortune is named for one of Boethius’s conception of fate? I didn’t either.

In any case, this reading is a cogent one-page biography of Boethius which doesn’t dumb down his ideas. Like almost everything you’ll find on Mark’s Text Terminal, these are Word documents, so easily manipulated and adapted for a variety of needs.

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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The Devil’s Dictionary: Bear

Posted on June 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Bear, n. In the stock market, a broker who, having sold short, uses his customers’ stocks to break the price.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. 

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Cultural Literacy: Bond

Posted on June 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on bonds, the financial instrument, not the force that holds atoms and molecules together, nor the ineffable thing that grows between friends, lovers, and humans and their pets.

I worked for ten years in a economics-and-finance-themed high school in Manhattan’s financial district. The word bond, which is extravagantly polysemous, really confounded the students I served there. Over the years, I developed a range of materials to teach this word in all its meanings in all the parts of speech. So, be on the lookout for those documents on this blog.

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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