“Attending an unsuccessful revival of the Maeterlinck play Aglavaine and Selysette, Tallullah Bankhead commented to Aleck Woollcott, ‘There is less to this than meets the eye.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Moving right along this morning, here is an worksheet on Jeanette Rankin. I’ve been fascinated with Representative Rankin since I encountered her in high school. Here’s a chance to introduce her to your students while attending to matters of grammar, style, usage, and punctuation.
If Everyday Edits work well in your classroom, don’t forget that you can find a yearlong supply of them gratis from the good people at Education World.
If you find typos in this document, well, that’s the object of the exercise. Guide your students through their repair!
“The Killing Fields: A film (1984) based on the real-life relationship between US journalist Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian translator Dith Pran following the withdrawal of US personnel from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1975. The plot recounts Schanberg’s attempts to locate Pran after the latter is seized for ‘re-education’ by the communist Khmer Rouge. The ‘killing fields’ of the title were the paddy fields around Phnom Penh in which the Khmer Rouge executed their opponents. The part of Dith Pran was played by Haing S. Ngor, a doctor who had himself fled from the Khmer Rouge. In reality Dith Pran saw the killing fields himself only when he visited them in as mayor of his home town, long after the Khmer Rouge had been thrown out. The phrase has since become a journalistic cliché.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
I’ve tagged it as high-interest material, but as I write this, I’m not sure I can say that with absolute confidence; in my day as a high school student, it certainly would have been. In any case, here is a reading on the legendary Woodstock music festival 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.
“Aberration, n. Any deviation in another from one’s own habit of thought, not sufficient in itself to constitute insanity. “
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Here is an English Usage worksheet on the nouns costumer and customer if you have any use for it.
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.
“Feminism: The progressive social movements of the 1960s produced their own academic and theoretical equivalents of revision and interpretation. The recognition of women’s historical oppression in a patriarchal society produced numerous reactions in the art world. In the early 1970s exhibitions that recovered ‘forgotten’ women artists began to establish a canon of great women artists. Judy Chicago produced The Dinner Party from craft techniques traditionally associated with women, such as needlepoint and ceramics. By using blatant female imagery, she and other sought to make explicitly ‘female’ works. By the late 1970s second-generation feminism coupled with a measure of psychoanalytic theory shifted the emphasis away from biological determinism to notions of self-identity. This approach was seen as more empowering, enabling both men and women to reexamine questions of gender and sexuality in contemporary art as well as in old masterworks previously rejected for their sexism. Contemporary artists working with this approach include Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
I need this morning to move on to other work on this blog, but before I do, I’ll publish one more post in its observance of Women’s History Month 2020, to with, this Everyday Edit worksheet on Eleanor Roosevelt. If you and your students find Everyday Edit work satisfying, let me remind you that you can find a yearlong supply of them under that hyperlink courtesy of the good people at Education World.
If you find typos in this document, thank the writer of them for showing students how to copyedit text; then fix them!
“Antithesis: (Greek: “Opposition”) Fundamentally, contrasting ideas sharpened by the use of opposite or noticeably different meanings. For example, Bacon’s apothegm (q.v.): ‘Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them.’
It is common in rhetoric (q.v.) and was particularly favored by the Augustan poets and users of the heroic couplet (q.v.). These lines from Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel are strongly antithetical:
‘Rais’d in extremes, and in extremes decry’d;
With Oaths affirm’d, with dying Vows deny’d.
Not weighed, or winnow’s by the Multitude;
But swallow’d in the Mass, unchew’d and Crude.
Some Truth there was, but dash’d and brew’d with Lyes;
To please the Fools, and puzzle all the Wise.
Succeeding times, did equal folly call,
Believing nothing, or believing all.’
Pope was an expert at the antithetical, as this compact example in his Moral Essays shows:
‘Less with than mimic, more a wit than wise.’
It is used frequently in prose to telling effect, as in this example from Dr. Johnson (in the London Chronicle, May 2nd, 1769) on the character of the Reverend Zachariah Mudge: ‘Though studious, he was popular; though argumentative, he was modest; though inflexible, he was candid; and though metaphysical, yet orthodox.’”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
OK, pushing forward to blog post 3,000, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “A Matter of Delicacy.”
I open this lesson, to get young minds focused and working, with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Langston Hughes. This scan of the illustration and questions of and for the case drives the lesson. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key to solve the case.
Incidentally, I am just about to post a trove of supporting materials for the Crime and Puzzlement units over on the About Posts and Texts page, the link to which is just below the banner of this website.
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 Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
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