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.

Aesop’s Fables: “The Ass, The Fox, and The Lion”

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

For younger kids, or for English language learners, here is a lesson plan on Aesop’s fable “The Ass, The Fox, and The Lion” and its accompanying reading with comprehension and interpretive questions in worksheet form. If nothing else, I expect (though perhaps I project because I got such a kick out of this as a young reader) younger kids will enjoy hearing a donkey called an “ass.”

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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Write It Right: Capable

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Capable. ‘Men are capable of being flattered.’ Say susceptible to flattery. ‘Capable of being refuted.’ Vulnerable to refutation. Unlike capacity, capability is not passive, but active. We are capable of doing, not of having something done to us.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

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Cultural Literacy: Limerick

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here’s a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the limerick as a poetic form. This might be something to use with English language learners.

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 Szasz Comments Presciently for Our Current Circumstances

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.”

Thomas Szasz

The Second Sin “Science and Scientism” (1973)

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

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Star Wars

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, let’s get started this morning with this relatively high-interest reading on Star Wars and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Nota bene, please, that this reading is about the original 1977 film. That said, there is a lot of room here to expand this material: conceptually, for example, there is an opening for students to explore the business of Hollywood productions by looking at franchise films, as well as the merchandise they create and market.

Furthermore, the Star Wars series can be used as a way of exploring Manichean allegories in books, art, and film. If the Star Wars films aren’t fundamentally about the conflict between good and evil, then I apparently missed the point of the exhausting number of them I watched.

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: Propaganda

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Propaganda (noun): Information, doctrine, ideas, or rumors spread to promote or discredit a cause, institution, or person, especially systematic political persuasion; self-serving or proselytizing material. Adjective: propagandist, propagandistic; adverb: propagandistically; noun: propagandism, propagandist; verb: propagandize.

‘Each end of the political spectrum has, I suppose, its own favorite style of propaganda. The Right tends to prefer gross, straightforward sentimentality. The Left, a sort of surface intellectualizing.'”

Neil Postman, Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk.

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

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A Lesson Plan on the Possessive Case of Nouns

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Last but not least this morning, here is a lesson plan on the possessive case of nouns. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the grim reaper, a subject which rarely fails to elicit student interest right at the beginning of a class period. Here is a learning support on this area of grammar and punctuation. This scaffolded worksheet is the centerpiece of this lesson; finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the 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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Bunraku

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Bunraku: Japanese puppet theater. Developed during the Tokugawa period, the most important bunraku plays were written by Chikamitsu Monzaemon. The dolls, about three feet in size, are remarkably lifelike; they are operated by their puppet masters who sit on stage and move about with their puppets. The musical narrative (joruri) is chanted by a reciter (gidayu) to the accompaniment of instruments. Many of the same plays have been adapted to kabuki drama.”

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

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Independent Practice: Shinto

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is an independent practice worksheet on Shinto. Incidentally, if you are a fan of Marie Kondo, you may find in this worksheet the basis of her approach to simplifying life by exercising some discipline over the accumulation of possessions. I actually read her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, which I found helpful. I recognized immediately its underlying Shinto principles; so I wasn’t terrible surprised when Ms. Kondo mentioned her time as a Shinto shrine maiden.

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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A Lesson Plan on Hesiod’s Ages of History from The Order of Things

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a lesson plan on Hesiod’s Ages of History along with its reading and comprehension questions. As I’ve mentioned previously when posting these materials, this lesson (and at least 30 others like it) are something I started working on just before the COVID19 pandemic scaled up and closed schools, and I lost my job as a public school teacher.

To reiterate (and you can read more about these on the “About Posts & Texts” page linked to just above the banner photograph on the homepage of this site), these documents aim to give students an opportunity to work with, and develop their own understanding of, moving between two sets of symbols, words and numbers, in one lesson. The worksheet can be contracted or expanded as is appropriate for the attention spans of the students with whom you’re working. These are, as you will infer, literacy development exercises.

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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