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.

The Devil’s Dictionary: Idiot

Posted on June 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but ‘pervades and regulates the whole.’ He has the last word on everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions of opinion and taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.”

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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Salutation (n), Valediction (n)

Posted on June 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

These context clues worksheets on the nouns salutation and valediction might be useful at most schools to introduce these two concepts–useful for understanding forms of correspondence–to your students. You could also use them as they are, or rewrite them, to introduce the words salutatorian and valedictorian to your graduating seniors.

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: Privative

Posted on June 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Privative: Indicating lack of loss of, absence of, or negation, e.g., the prefixes ‘un-,’ ‘a-,’ ‘non-,’ the suffix ‘-less.'”

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

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Common Errors in English Usage: Alumnus, Alumni

Posted on June 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is an English usage worksheet on sorting out the use of alumnus and alumni. If you’re so inclined, it would take only a moment to explain the inflections at the end of these Latin words and in so doing plant basic knowledge about inflected languages in students’ minds.

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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Timothy Shanahan on Leveled Literacy Curricula

Posted on June 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Leveled reading emphasizes students’ current limitations, rather than increasing their possibilities, especially for the least advantaged of our students. We can do better.”

Timothy Shanahan

“Limiting Children to Books They Can Already Read: Why It Reduces Their Opportunity to Learn.”  American Educator 44.2 (Summer 2020): 17. Print.

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Word Root Exercise: Pept, Peps

Posted on June 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

Last but not least this morning, here is a worksheet on the Greek word roots pept and peps. They mean digestion. Now you know why people with sour dispositions are often described as dyspeptic. Connotations aside, this is another word root that will show up in the lexicon of the healthcare professions, should you have students…well, professing an interest in a career in health care.

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: Heywood Broun his Sartorial State

Posted on June 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Broun, known for his always unkempt appearance, devoted an article to the topic ‘Best-Dressed Women of the World.’ In it he commented on his own experiences in such contests: ‘While I was running for Best-Dressed Senior in the graduating class of Horace Mann High School, I often spent as much as three or four minutes in the morning deciding which pants I ought to wear. The grey or the blue. The blue or the grey. I generally decided to take the ones which possessed the closest appearance to a crease.’”

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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Hank Williams

Posted on June 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here’s another set of documents that to the best of my knowledge I only used once; that means I wrote them for someone with an interest in country music in general and this legend of the genre in particular. So, here is a reading on Hank Williams and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

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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Cultural Literacy: Winston Churchill

Posted on June 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, moving right along this beautiful June morning in Vermont, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Winston Churchill. Unlike most of the Cultural Literacy worksheets you’ll find on Mark’s Text Terminal, this one is a full page; it can be used for independent practice (homework, to the layperson), or even in the classroom.

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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3 Furies

Posted on June 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Megaera * Tisiphone * Alecto

The furies (Erinyes) were also known in Athens by the cautious euphemism of the Eumenides—‘the kindly ones’—and were worshipped in a cave below the Parthenon. Megaera the jealous, Tisiphone the blood avenger and Alecto the unceasing were elemental figures of human power—the relentless winged spirits of Conscience, Punishment and Retribution hunting down the guilty.

Later traditions identified them as the daughters of Gaia, inseminated when the bloody testicles of the ancient god Uranus, who was castrated by his son Cronus, fell to the earth. They are sometimes depicted like a winged spirit of victory, sometimes like a Medusa figure dripping with gore and a scalp sprouting a mane of thrashing serpents.”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Worksheets

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