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.

A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “The Awesome Treasure”

Posted on April 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

Because they are, so to speak, flying off the shelf, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “The Awesome Treasure.”

I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Any Port in a Storm.” This scan of the illustration and questions drives the case; this typescript of the answer key helps you solve 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.

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Braggadocio

Posted on April 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Braggadocio (noun): Bumptious bragging or self-inflation; boastful language. Adj. braggadocian.

‘…the fancy lingoes of psychiatry, pedagogy, welfare, and big business—these are the twentieth century equivalents of ‘tall talk,’ sharing in the windiness of the nineteenth-century variety, but unlike it, incredibly dull and vapid. The hyperbole, grotesquery, and braggadocio survive only in American slang.’ Thomas Pyles, Words and Ways of American English“

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

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Cultural Literacy: Enfant Terrible

Posted on April 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

I can think of no better time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the term and concept enfant terrible, since we seem to have so many of them at the moment in our culture and society.

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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Delegate (n/vi/vt)

Posted on April 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here are a pair of worksheets on delegate as a noun and a verb. As a verb it is used both intransitively and transitively–and the stress shifts to the penultimate vowel a–as in delegate, like the thing you walk through to enter a zoo or park.

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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Osamu Dazai

Posted on April 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Osamu Dazai: (1909-1948) Japanese author. Although chiefly known for his fiction, Dazai also wrote personal essays and memoirs, children’s stories, and historical narratives. His work has attracted a large and dedicated readership, for whom the author’s deeply troubled life, and its brilliant retelling, have struck a responsive chord. In masterpieces such as Shayo (1947; tr The Setting Sun, 1956), and Ningen shikkaku (1948; tr No Longer Human, 1957), Dazai captured the postwar crisis of Japanese cultural identity and the travail of a lost generation of youth. The characteristic Dazai protagonist, in his addictive, womanizing, self-indulgent excess, artfully mirrors the life of the author, who, following numerous failed suicide attempts, eventually succeeded. This final act of self-dramatization is reminiscent of Akutagawa and Mishima.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Everyday Edit: Japan’s “Coming of Age Day”

Posted on April 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on Japan’s “Coming of Age Day.” If you like these worksheets then you are in luck! The generous people at Education World give away a yearlong supply of them, and if you dig a little deeper over there, you’ll find the answer keys as well.

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Italianate Style

Posted on April 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Italianate Style: An American residential architectural style seen ca. 1840-1865. Fancifully adapted from Italian Renaissance palaces, the American version is typically of two or three stories with a low-pitched hip roof, formal balance of design, wide and bracketed eves, and much interest in such façade details as window caps. Most examples have a cupola or belvedere. The innovation of cast-iron construction in the mid-19th century provided affordable, mass-produced Italianate facades such as those still found on the SoHo district of New York City.”

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

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Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

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Lucky Luciano

Posted on April 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a relatively high-interest reading on Lucky Luciano along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As I say tirelessly–and probably tiresomely as well–this material is in Microsoft Word so there is plenty of room to expand, contract, or otherwise manipulate it for your needs.

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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A Lesson Plan on the Latin Word Root Cred

Posted on April 8, 2020 | Leave a comment

Before I move on to other things today, here is a lesson plan on the Latin word root cred, which means believe. Other than to observe that this is an extremely productive root in English, and forms the basis of words–credit, credibility, incredible–we use pretty much constantly, I won’t belabor the point, even though, in fact, I just did.

Anyway, I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun tenet. Finally, here is the word root worksheet that is the centerpiece of this lesson.

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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Jayanta Mahapatra

Posted on April 8, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Jayanta Mahapatra: (1928-) Indian writer, translator, and educator, Born in Cuttack, India, he continues to live and work in his native Indian state. Mahapatra has taught college physics for most of his life, He came to writing late, publishing his first book at the age of forty. He is best known for his poetry in English, which is often characterized by a brooding tone and a mixture of concrete images with metaphysical abstractions. In the 1970s he began to achieve an international reputation. In addition to his many volumes of poetry, he has published juvenile fiction and English translations from Oriya.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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