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.

Book of Answers: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

What are Jekyll and Hyde’s first names? In the 1886 work by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Henry Jekyll is the London doctor who creates the potion that turns him into Edward Hyde.

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

A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Kidnap”

OK, moving right along on this Friday morning, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Kidnap.”

I open this lesson, after the fractiousness of a class change, with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “bee in one’s bonnet.” You’ll need this PDF of the reading and questions that drive the case. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key that solves the case.

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.

The Algonquin Wits: George S. Kaufman Listens to Ruth Gordon

Ruth Gordon once described to G.S.K. [George S. Kaufman] a new play in which she was appearing: ‘In the first scene I’m on the left side of the stage, and the audience has to imagine I’m eating dinner in a crowded restaurant. Then in scene two I run over to the right side of the stage and the audience imagines I’m in my own drawing room.’”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

Jerry Seinfeld

While I have to assume that Seinfeld remains in syndication, new episodes left the airwaves long ago; in fact, the last episode was broadcast over 20 years ago on May 14, 1998. Since he remains something of a global cultural icon, this reading on Jerry Seinfeld and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet might remain of interest to students.

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.

Term of Art: Anticlimax

Anticlimax: According to Dr. Johnson’s definition (and he appears to have been the first to record the word) it is “a sentence in which the last part expresses something lower than the first.” In fact, a bathetic declension from a noble tone to one less exalted. The effect can be comic and is often intended to be so. A good example occurs in Fielding’s burlesque (q.v.), Tom Thumb:

King [Aruther, to his queen Dolallola]

…Whence flow those tears fast down thy blubber’d cheeks,

Like swoln Gutter, gushing through the streets?

The effect can also be unintentionally comic. There is a well-known example in Crashaw’s Saint Mary Magdelene, or the Weeper:

And now where e’er He Strays,

Among the Galilean Mountains,

Or more unwelcome ways,

He’s followed by two faithful fountains;

Two walking baths, two weeping motions;

Portable & compendious oceans.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Word Root Exercise: Para

Here’s a worksheet on the Greek root para. It means, variously, beside, beyond, abnormal, variation, and assistant. If you’re serving a special needs population, chances are you’re working with a paraprofessional who works in parallel with you. And if you’re teaching science, especially, you know and probably even use paradigm in your classroom.

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.

Kieran Egan on Narrative as Compelling Pedagogy

“A model for teaching that draws on the power of the story, then, will ensure that we set up a conflict or sense of dramatic tension at the beginning of our lessons and unit. Thus, we create some expectation that we will satisfy at the end. It is this rhythm of expectation and satisfaction that will give us a principle for precisely selecting content…. We need, then, to be more conscious of the importance of beginning with a conflict or problem whose resolution at the end can set such a rhythm in motion.”

Kieran Egan

Teaching as Story-Telling: An Alternative Approach to Teaching and Curriculum in the Elementary School

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

Cultural Literacy: Armenian Massacre

Because the events it records have been in the news lately, or perhaps belatedly might be the better adverb here, this seems like a good time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Armenian massacres of 1915. Many historians regard this as the first modern genocide; it certainly set a grim tone for the bloody twentieth century.

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 Devil’s Dictionary: Functionary

“Functionary, n. A person entrusted with certain official duties. That great and good man, the late President Buchanan, once unluckily mentioned himself with commendable satisfaction as ‘an old public functionary.’ The description fitted him like a skin and he wore it to his grave. When he appeared as the Judgement Seat, and his case was called, the Recording Angel ran his finger down the index to the Book of Doom and read off the name: ‘James Buchanan, O.P.F.’ ‘What does that mean?’ inquired the Court. And with that readiness of resource which in life had distinguished it from a garden slug, that truthful immortal part replied: ‘Oncommonly phaultless filanthropist.’ Mr. Buchanan was admitted to a seat in the Upper House.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.

Abstruse (adj), Recondite (adj)

While I’m not sure it is necessarily a word high schoolers ought to know (although every time I qualify a blog post with those words, I find myself wondering if there is any word a high schooler doesn’t need to know), here nonetheless is a context clues worksheet on the adjective abstruse. It means, simply, “difficult to comprehend.”

If that doesn’t quite cover conceptually what you mean students to understand, then perhaps this worksheet on the adjective recondite will supply the needed depth of understanding. It means “hidden from sight, concealed,” “difficult or impossible for one of ordinary understanding or knowledge to comprehend,” and “of, relating to or dealing with something little known or obscure.”

Incidentally, I have always been impressed by the fact, and have tried to impress students with it as well, that the great rapper Guru (who died in 2010, I was sad to learn while writing this post) managed to work recondite into his song “Jazz Thing” in reference to the late, great Thelonious Monk.

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.