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.

Malaise (n)

It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, and a pretty solid abstraction, so here is a context clues worksheet on the noun malaise.

That is all.

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.

Book of Answers: James Fenimore Cooper

“Who is the title character in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826)? Uncas, the son of Chingachgook. He is killed defending Cora, his love, against Magua.”

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Metacomet

Now that this nation is showing some signs of willingness to face its past of colonial exploitation and subjugation, the time may be right to use this reading on Metacomet and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet in the classroom. 

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.

Term of Art: Hermeneutics

“hermeneutics: Movement in the philosophy of science, according to which the task of the human sciences is to elucidate the structure of the social institutions underlying behavior. Thus the aim of linguistics, as one human (and therefore ‘hermeneutic’) science, is to elucidate the rules of language, seen as rules that constitute such an institution.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

A Lesson Plan on the Laws of Motion from The Order of Things

Here’s a lesson plan on the laws of motion built around this short worksheet with a list of the laws of motion adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book The Order of Things, one of fifty of these short lessons that will ultimately appear on this blog.

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.

Term of Art: Gerund

“Gerund: The -ing (form of a verb that functions as a noun: Hiking is good exercise. She was praised for her playing.”

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

The Algonquin Wits: Robert Benchley on Technology

Benchley was known for carrying on a constant war with machines and inanimate objects, always coming out the loser. Once he wrote, ‘The hundred and one little bits of wood and metal that go to make up the impedimenta of daily life…each and every one are bent on my humiliation and working together, as on one great team, to bedevil and confuse me and to get me into a neurasthenic’s home before I am sixty. I can’t fight these boys. They’ve got me licked.’”

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

Precedence (n), Precedents (n/pl)

Here are five homophone worksheets on the nouns precedence and precedents. These actually started as a single English usage (Paul Brian’s book Common Error in English Usage) from a passage in  worksheet, but I decided I’d rather have them as homophone worksheets and so rewrote them as such. Precedents, of course, is the plural of precedent–and both are good words for students to know, as is, of course, precedence.

So there you go.

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.

Roman Classicism

“Roman Classicism: An American manifestation of English Georgian architecture, favored especially by Thomas Jefferson and seen ca. 1790 to 1830. A raised first floor, a Roman-style columned portico raised on a podium, and severity of ornament characterize the style.”

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

Lucius Junius Brutus

This reading on Lucius Junius Brutus is actually a nice little summary of the founding of the Roman Republic, both in legendary and factual detail. Here is the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that goes with it.

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.