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.

Raymond Chandler on Chess

Posted on August 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

“As elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.”

Raymond Chandler

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

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Harvard

Posted on August 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

Anyone I’ve known who has dealt with the institution reported to me that its cachet is hypertrophied, but since it remains a brand in higher education around the globe, here is a reading on Harvard University and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As for the school’s cachet, I have no experience there (other than walking around on its leafy, mellow campus), so I can’t speak to, well anything about it.

Nota bene that this is a short history of the university and its role in the development of colleges and universities in the United States.

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: Teacher Talk

Posted on August 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Teacher Talk: A semi-technical term in educational research and applied linguistics for the characteristic (often simplified) style of speech of teachers. In general terms, this may be prompted by the social setting of the classroom, with repetition, rephrasing for the sake of clarity, and patterns of stereotyped interaction with learners, such as question, response, and evaluation. For teachers of English as a foreign language, speech may be slower and clearer than is usual, avoiding and minimizing elided usages such as must’ve/musta and ‘sno good y’-know, repeating the same thing in several ways, and using expressions particularly associated with education, classrooms, and textbooks.”

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

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Common Errors in English Usage: Subject to and Subjected to

Posted on August 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

As I think these are two locutions high school students should understand and be able to use properly before they graduate, here is an English usage worksheet on differentiating the use of subject to and subjected to in declarative sentences and expository prose.

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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The Algonquin Wits: Ring Lardner on Calvin Coolidge

Posted on August 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

“President Coolidge’s inimitable deadpan personality became a cherished target for the Round Tablers’ wit. After his first meeting with Coolidge, Lardner reported to the group that he had told the president a humorous anecdote, adding, ‘He laughed until you could hear a pin drop.’”

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

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Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

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A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Buried Gold”

Posted on August 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

It was 52 degrees at 5:00 this morning here in southwestern Vermont, which sure felt like an harbinger of fall. It’s warming up slowly. I feel like, as I did in my late teens and early twenties, that I should be preparing to begin a six-week apple harvest. I can’t imagine, at my age, what picking 120 bushels of apples a day would do to my body and mind.

Ok, that said, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Buried Gold.” I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the proverb “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” This is often attributed to Shakespeare; in fact, it comes from the pen of the Restoration dramatist William Congreve from his play The Mourning Bride. I actually posted this short exercise with a parts of speech lesson elsewhere on this blog, so be on the lookout.

Here is the scan with the illustration, reading, and questions that you’ll need to conduct your investigation and therefore teach this lesson. And here, at last, is the typescript of the answer key so you can solve your case and bring the offender to the bar of justice–so to speak.

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: Loose Sentence

Posted on August 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Loose Sentence: A sentence that begins with the main idea and then attaches modifiers, qualifiers, and additional details: He was determined to succeed, with or without the promotion he was hoping for and in spite of the difficulties he was confronting at every turn.”

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

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Dulcet (adj)

Posted on August 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

It’s another Word of the Day from Merriam-Webster that I originally thought I’d let pass; but while I was at the laundromat this morning with my notebook, I figured well, why not? So here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective dulcet. It carries a trio a meanings which are loosely related by connotation: 1. sweet to the taste; 2. pleasing to the ear <~ tones>; 3. generally pleasing or agreeable.

The word arrives in English from the Latin dulcis, which isn’t particularly productive in English. But it does show up in Spanish, and if you teach students whose first language is Spanish they will recognize this word fairly quickly–one of the meanings of dulce in Spanish is candy, and a dulceria is a candy store. Teaching Latin roots to students whose first tongue is one of the Romance Languages offers students a bridge between their native languages and 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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Thorstein Veblen on the Esteem of One’s Peers

Posted on August 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

“In order to gain and hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence.”

Thorstein Veblen

The Theory of the Leisure Class ch. 3 (1899)

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

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John D. Rockefeller

Posted on August 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

It’s nearly impossible, as awful as he may have been, to underestimate his influence on American industrial capitalism, so I think this reading on John D Rockefeller and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet are relevant in a number of places across the social sciences curriculum.

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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