Rotten Reviews: What the Light Was Like
“…it would be better for Amy Clampitt if, at least for a while, she tucked her notes from Poetry 101 away in a trunk.”
Poetry
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged literary oddities, poetry, readings/research
Here is a worksheet on the Greek word roots astro and aster. They mean, as you have doubtlessly already inferred, star.
These are hard working roots in English, pushing into fruition words like asterisk, asteroid, astronaut, and astronomy.
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.
“Who was Jeeves’s boss? Bertie Wooster, a young man-about-town in P.G. Wodehouse’s stories beginning with My Man Jeeves (1919). Jeeves was his valet.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, readings/research
Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective equivocal. This is a word freighted with a number of closely related meanings: “subject to two or more interpretations and usually used to mislead or confuse <an ~ statement>”; “uncertain as an indication or sign <~ evidence>”; “of uncertain nature or classification <~ shapes>”; of uncertain disposition toward a person or thing <an ~ attitude>,” and “of doubtful advantage, genuineness, or moral rectitude.” Merriam-Webster offers obscure as a synonym–so you see the problem here.
You can probably see or hear the Latin roots equ and equi–i.e. equal in this word. In fact, using Latin word roots, one can easily see two of them work, equ and equi as above, along with voc–“to call, voice.” The word means equal voice, which certainly squares with obscure, particularly as the number of voices in an equivocal statement increases.
As I prepared to post this, I went looking for a context clues worksheet on the verb equivocate. To my surprise, I haven’t produced one yet. Since verbs are the workhorses of language, I try to lead with them where context clues worksheets are concerned. In this case, after looking at the definition of equivocate, “to use equivocal language esp. with intent to deceive” and “to avoid committing oneself in what one says,” I see why I started with the adjective. In any case, a worksheet on the verb 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.
Here is something that popped up in The Washington Post that came over the transom last weekend. It’s long overdue, but better late than never.
“American Scene Painting: A term that has extended and supplanted the term regionalism. It had come to include several movements from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries in which painters chose limited areas or aspects of distinctly American landscapes or life as their subjects and rendered them in a direct, usually literal style. Includes the landscapes of Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt and the regionalist painters of the Middle West.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the demonstrative pronouns. What are the demonstrative pronouns? They are four simple words: this, that, these, and those.
I open this lesson with this worksheet on the homophones to, too, and two. In the event the lesson continues into a second day (an eventuality for which I always prepare), here is a second do-now, this one a Cultural Literacy worksheet on italics. The principle work for this lesson is this scaffolded worksheet. To make teaching the lesson a bit easier, here is the teachers copy of the same worksheet I prepared for my own use.
This lesson gives students an opportunity to try out their procedural knowledge, which the lessons prior to this one introduced in various ways, of subject-verb agreement in declarative sentences. These four words have simple, but elegant rules: this and that always govern the use of a singular noun and singular verb form; these and those, of course, govern the use of a plural noun and a plural verb form. I worked in college writing centers for several years, and one of the most common writing lapses that moved people to visit was subject-verb agreement in number. So–stress this skill, I would say.
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.
“Freedom to think—which means nothing unless it means freedom to think differently—can be society’s most precious gift to itself. The first duty of a school is to defend and cherish it.”
Arthur Bestor, as Quoted in The Teacher and the Taught (1963)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
Once again, from the pages of Paul Brians’ Common Errors in English Usage, here is a worksheet on toward and towards and their proper use in prose.
As Professor Brians’ passage explains, the distinction between these words is a matter of American and British English. Americans tend to use toward, whereas the British prefer towards. In any case, as you would expect, the words are interchangeable. The worksheet contains five prepositional phrases using toward, and calls upon students to build sentences around the phrases. As always, however, this is an open document that you can manipulate to your class’s needs.
Incidentally, Merriam-Webster lists toward as both an adjective and a preposition. If you look up the adjective (meaning “coming soon,” “imminent,” “happening at the moment,” and “afoot” and with an obsolete meaning of “quick to learn”), I think you’ll agree that teaching it as a preposition (“in the direction of,” etc.) is the best course of action for helping students understand its meaning and proper use.
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.
“printing instruction: While computer keyboarding skills are becoming more and more a part of writing, printing remains an essential skill. Printing instruction begins in kindergarten where children are taught to write the letters of the alphabet, and continues through third grade until cursive writing is introduced. Problems in forming letters accurately may be cause by poor visual and motor skills. Extreme printing difficulties are called dysgraphia.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
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