“Evangelist, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion
Here is a reading on lesbianism and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This has tended to be a high-interest item in my classroom, so I’ve tagged it as such; it is also material written to address personal identity, so I’ve tagged it as social-emotional learning as well.
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.
“Mrs. Parker once collided with Clare Boothe Luce in a doorway. ‘Age before beauty,’ cracked Mrs. Luce. ‘Pearls before swine,’ said Mrs. Parker, gliding through the door.”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
OK, before I return to a really trashy thriller I have the bad judgement to read, here is a lesson plan on the admission on the admission–or readmission after the Civil War–of states to the United States. Here also is the worksheet at the center of this lesson.
The material I have adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s The World of Order and Organization; How Things Are Arranged into Hierarchies, Structures, and Pecking Orders (New York: Random House, 1997)–the original copy I possessed of the book not long after it was published was called simply The Order of Things, hence the title of the unit–and written into lessons and worksheets is something brand new at Mark’s Text Terminal. I used only a few of them in the classroom. Since it is unlikely that I will teach at the secondary level in public schools again, these are untested. I’ll post them anyway; a rationale, and my thinking toward that rationale, for their use can be found on the “About Posts & Texts” page, linked to just above the banner photograph but below the banner itself.
Please allow me to dilate on the statement below: like just about everything on Mark’s Text Terminal, these are Microsoft Word documents. That means you can alter and adapt them to your needs. If you use these materials and find them effective, I would be much obliged for your comments. And please keep in mind that if these are useful educational instruments, I will be much more likely to produce more of them–and post them here.
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.
Here is a lesson plan on using the predicate adjective in short, declarative sentences. The syntax of these kinds of short sentences, which is subject-linking verb-adjective, is one of the most common constructions in English speech and prose. For that reason, I have included a lesson on the predicate adjective on each of the first three units on parts of speech, to wit nouns, verbs, and adjectives, that I wrote about ten years ago and have revised ever since.
That’s a long way around explaining that you will see lessons on using the predicate adjective in grammatically complete declarative sentences at least a couple of more times.
In any case, I open this lesson with this worksheet on the homophones compliment and complement. Because the noun complement is often used as a synonym for predicate in grammar manuals, and I think it’s important that students know how to use grammar manuals, I want them to know this word. This scaffolded worksheet is the mainstay of this lesson; here is the teachers’ copy of it. Finally, here is an adjectives word bank. Please notice that this document has four copies of the same word list–it’s meant to be cut in four pieces in a paper-saving measure.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on dyslexia. I can think of several uses for this, including basic instruction in literacy. Your call.
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.
“case: Inflectional category, basically of nouns, which typically marks their syntactic function in relation to other parts of a sentence. E.g, in Latin vidi puellam ‘I saw a girl,’ puellam ‘(a) girl’ has the ending of the accusative case (puella-m), which marks it as the object of the verb (vidi ‘I-saw’).
Thence of various more abstract constructs. Thus the function of Mary in I saw Mary is like that of puellam in the example from Latin. Therefore, it too is traditionally ‘accusative,’ in opposition to the same word as a ‘nominative,’ in Mary saw me. Hence abstract cases, posited in principle in all languages, regardless of whether they are realized, as in languages such as Latin, by inflections.”
Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Alright, here is a context clues worksheet on the verb deduce, which is only used transitively. Without getting into a major discussion on the validity of deduction as a means of analysis and cognition, I will say that I consider it inarguable that high school students should know this word and the concept it represents–i.e. a mode of thinking and analysis.
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.
“activists Members of a political group prepared to take action as opposed to those whose membership is passive, involving only, for example, payment of membership fees. In the 1960s and early 1970s the term was applied widely to those members of left-wing and youth ‘movements’ who attended demonstrations and rallies, usually against US involvement in Vietnam, or more generally against various aspects of Western capitalism.
In the 1980s, the term has been used in the UK mainly to describe members of constituency Labour parties who have sought to reform the party’s procedures and inject a more socialist element into its policies.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged term of art
Lest students think he is only a brand of beer and not a the proper name of a hotheaded patriot from Boston in the cause of the American Revolution as well as a founding father of the United States, here is a reading on Samuel Adams 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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