Moving right along this morning, here is a worksheet on the Greek roots pter/o, pteryg, and pteryx. They mean wing and fin. You can probably see pterodactyl arising from these; you’ll have to open the worksheet to see the rest.
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 Ice Age lasted for an unimaginably long time. Many tens of thousands of years, which was just as well, for otherwise these people would not have had time to invent all these things. But gradually the earth grew warmer and the ice retreated to the high mountains and people—who by now were much like us—learned, with the warmth, to plant grasses and then grind the seeds to make a paste they could bake in the fire, and this was bread. In the course of time, they learned to build tents and tame animals which until then had roamed freely around. And they followed these herds, as people in Lapland still do. Because forests were dangerous places in those days, home to large numbers of animals such as wolves and bears, people in several places (and this is often the case with inventors) had the same excellent idea: they built “pile dwellings” in the middle of lakes, huts on stilts rammed deep in the mud. By this time they were masters at shaping and polishing their tools and used a different, harder stone to bore holes in their axe-heads for handles. That must have been hard work! Work which could take the whole of the winter. Imagine how often the axe-head must have broken at the last minute, so they had to start all over again.”
Excerpted from: Gombrich, E.H. Trans. Caroline Mustill. A Little History of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Although Merriam-Webster’s designates its usage as “to blindfold” as archaic, this context clues worksheet on the verb hoodwink, which is only used transitively, will help students infer the demotic usage of this word, which is “to deceive by false appearance.”
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.
“Archaic Period: A term used to describe an early stage in the development of civilization. Specifically, in Egypt it covers the first two dynasties, c 3200-2800 BC, in which the country was unified and came to its first flowering of culture. In Greece it describes the rise of civilization from c 750 BC to the Persian invasion in 480 BC. As used by Americanists, the term refers to a stage of development rather than a chronological period. It is characterized by a hunting and gathering way of life in a post-Pleistocene environment similar to that of the present. Under special circumstances there may be settled life, pottery, and even agriculture as long as this is subsidiary to the collection of wild foods. The term was coined for certain cultures of the woodlands of eastern North America dating from c 8000-1000 BC, but usage has been extended (sometimes uncritically) to all sorts of unrelated cultures which show a similar level of development but may be of widely varying dates.
Excerpted from: Bray, Warwick, and David Trump. The Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology. New York: Penguin, 1984.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged term of art
OK, health teachers: if you can use them, here is a reading on trans fat and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it.
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.
“Muckraking (noun): The searching out or exposure, as by a writer or newspaper, or wrongdoing committed by prominent individuals or institutions, especially of political corruption or scandal; sensational revelatory journalism. Adjective: muckraking; noun: muckrake, muckraker; verb: muckrake.
‘Having failed in her basement, I thought to have her here, in the loft of the parish hall, where a leaky old skylight made vivid the woody forms of miniature creches and lifesize mangers, wise kings’ crowns and shepherd’s crooks, Victorian alter furniture and great padded Bibles no longer thumped by the virile muckraking parsons of the first Roosevelt’s reign, plywood palm trees, and temples of gilded cardboard.’
John Updike, A Month of Sundays”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Rereading this context clues worksheet on gravity caused me to realize that because gravity, while it exists in the physical world (indeed, it’s a cornerstone of physics), is nonetheless a very difficult abstraction to explain, this document is not exactly the strongest I’ve ever composed. In any case, it is, like everything else on this website, in Microsoft Word, so you can edit or rewrite as you see fit.
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.
“Hubris: (Greek “wanton insolence”) This shortcoming or defect in the Greek tragic hero leads him to ignore the warnings of the gods and to transgress their laws and commands. Eventually hubris brings about downfall and nemesis (q.v.), as in the case of Creon in Sophocles’s Antigone and Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy. See HAMARTIA; TRAGEDY.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged drama/theater, readings/research, term of art
OK, on this very dark, still morning in southwestern Vermont, here are five homophone worksheets on the verb undo and the adjective undue if you need your students to understand these words.
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.
“Paul Bowles: (1910-1999) American writer and composer. Born in Queens, New York, Bowles fled America at the age of eighteen to live in Paris. His early mentors Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas advised him to travel in order to develop as an artist. Bowles went on to exhaustively explore the issues that arise when modern Westerners confront non-Western cultures. Bowles first gained attention as a composer, studying with Aaron Copland and Virgil Thompson and producing scores for work by Tennessee Williams and Orson Welles. He is best known, however, for his first two books, The Sheltering Sky (1949), a novel, and the short-story collection The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950), which introduced his central theme: the disintegration of developed Western culture as it encounters more primitive societies and a less mediated natural world. Bowles is also highly regarded for his translation of North African tribal tales and his poetry. Sympathetic critics have praised his work as a powerful encapsulation of existentialism, while others have found it repetitious and stunted in development.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, music, readings/research
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