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.

Local Color

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Local Color: System of representing the color of an object which begins with its hue and adds shade or lightness by the addition of black or white pigment to give a more naturalistic appearance. Pure or shaded local color was used almost exclusively until the late 19th century, when the Impressionists discovered that the brain blends contrasting hues into vibrant impressions of actual color.”

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

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Heyday (n)

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

It was one of the Words of the Day I marked down when I was out for a short vacation last week, and it’s a good word used regularly in conversational English, so here is context clues worksheet on the noun heyday if you can use it.

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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Rotten Reviews Omnibus: Saul Bellow

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

The Adventures of Augie March

“All of Those Words, in denominations of from three to five letters, are present.”

Library Journal

Henderson the Rain King

“The novelist who doesn’t like meanings writes an allegory; the allegory means that men should not mean but be. Ods bodkins. The reviewer looks at the evidence and wonders if he should damn the author and praise the book, or praise the author and damn the book. And is it possible, somehow or other to praise or damn, both? He isn’t sure.”

Reed Whittemore, New Republic

“At times Henderson is too greyly overcast with thought to be more than a dun Quixote.”

Time

Herzog 

“There is no effort toward decency—many of the conversations that come back to Herzog are foul-mouthed, and his own sexual actions and reminiscences are unrestrained.

America

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

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Common Errors in English Usage: Shall (v) and Will (v)

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

Alright, before it gets too hot to occupy this room, here is an English usage worksheet on differentiating the use of shall and will. It’s straightforward and should take only minutes to complete.

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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Thomas Henry Huxley Defines Science

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

“On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences” (1854)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Socrates

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on Socrates, history’s first teacher, and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet: this is a core reading in all four of the common branch subjects, and a way of thinking about teaching and learning, for students’ and teachers’ edification.

Incidentally, if you’ve been hanging with William “Bill” S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan, as it was my mild misfortune to do over the Labor Day weekend, this Greek philosopher’s name is not pronounced “So-Crates” but rather sock-ruh-tease. Just sayin’.

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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Term of Art: Object

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Object: The noun or pronoun that completes a prepositional phrase or the meaning of a transitive verb. (See also direct object, indirect object, and preposition.) Frost offered his audience a poetic performance they would likely never forget.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

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Word Root Exercise: Arium, Orium and Ary

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

Can you use this worksheet on the Latin word roots arium, orium and ary? They mean, simply, “a place for.” When you consider words like aquarium, emporium, and aviary, you begin to see just how productive this word root is in English.

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: Elaboration

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

“The process of discussing or going over new information in order to form connections with familiar information, a process that helps memory and affects depth of processing. There is a great deal of evidence in support of the idea that the more details are processed and repeated, the more likely they are to be retrieved from long-term memory.”

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

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Bunkum (n)

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, and it is, I think you’ll agree, a strong abstract noun for our time. Therefore, I wrote this context clues worksheet on the noun bunkum. It means “insincere or foolish talk” and “nonsense.” The context clues I provided are relatively solid, if a bit trite.

This word was a favorite of legendary iconoclastic newspaperman H.L. Mencken; indeed, a posthumous collection of Mencken’s is titled A Carnival of Buncombe. That spelling of the word, incidentally, indicates its etymology, which is a circuitous tale involving Buncombe County, North Carolina, and Felix Walker, the United States Representative who served the district from 1816 to 1822.

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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