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 Weekly Text, 5 July 2024: A Lesson Plan on Shakespeare’s Plays in Chronological Order by Date of Publication from The Order of Things

This week’s Text is another lesson, this one on Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order of publication, adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s superlative reference book The Order of Things.

You’ll need this worksheet with a reading (which is a list) and attendant comprehension questions. Nota bene, once again, that this series of lessons from The Order of Things, at least in my design conception, is meant to serve emergent and struggling readers as well as learners of English as a new language. Many, if not most of the lessons adapted from Ms. Kipfer’s book offer students a chance to deal with two symbolic systems–i.e. numbers and words–in a relatively stress-free way.

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.

Common English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Wish

Here is a worksheet on the verb wish when it is used with an infinitive. I wish to produce better materials for teaching writing than this one.

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.

The Doubter’s Companion: Award Show

Award Show: Mechanism by which the members of a given profession attempt to give themselves the attributes of the pre-modern ruling classes—the military, aristocracy and priesthood—by assigning various orders, decorations, and medals to each other.

These shows are superficial expressions of corporatism. As with the pre-modern classes, their awards relate principally to relationships within the profession. Each time the words “I want to thank” are used by someone being decorated, they indicate a relationship based on power. The awards have little to do with the corporation’s relationship to the outside world—what you might call the public—or for that matter with quality.”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

Cultural Literacy: Satire

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on satire. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two relatively simple sentences and three comprehension questions. A short but solid introduction to this important cultural concept.

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.

Assonance

“Assonance: In poetry and prose, the identity of vowel sounds, as in the words scream and beech. Assonance is one of the many phonetic devices that serve to unify poetry and prose. In poetry it is frequently substituted for rhyme and, in this use, is sometimes referred to as vowel rhyme.”

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

The Weekly Text, 28 June 2024: A Lesson Plan on the Latin Word Root Six

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Latin word rood sex, which means six. This doesn’t produce a lot of high frequency words in English, but like the previous word root lesson that appeared on this blog, it is a root that shows up in words that are otherwise difficult to understand, like sexagenarian, sextuplet, sexennial, and sextet. They’re all included on the scaffolded worksheet, replete with cognates from the Romance languages that grow from Latin roots, that serves as the mainstay of this lesson

As I write this post, I find mysterious my choice, for this lesson, of this do-now exercise 0n the noun intercourse. It means, in the context of the sentence in which I have placed it on this worksheet, “connection or dealings between persons or groups” as well as “exchange, especially of thoughts or feelings.” So, unlike other lessons (but like the lesson on sept), there is no meaningful connection between the do-now and the main work 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.

George Bernard Shaw on Chess

“Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.”

George Bernard Shaw

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

Common English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Want

Here is a worksheet on the verb want when followed by an infinitive. I want to move all of these worksheets out of my drafts folder.

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.

Write It Right: Demise for Death

“Demise for Death. Usually said of a person of note. Demise means the lapse, as by death, of some authority, distinction, or privilege, which passes to another than the one that held it; as the demise of the Crown.”

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

Book of Answers: Pamela

“What was Pamela’s last name in Samuel Richardson’s Pamela? Andrews.”

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