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.

Semantic (adj)

If you’re interested in teaching your students terms of art that represent concepts in learning, then this context clues worksheet on the adjective semantic might be useful. You could also use this document as a template for a context clues worksheet on the noun semantics. Either way, these words represent a concept–the use of language to create meaning–that students probably ought to know before they graduate high school.

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.

Rotten Rejections: Zane Grey

“The Last of the Plainsmen (1908)

I do not see anything in this to convince me you can write either narrative or fiction.

Riders of the Purple Sage (1912)

It is offensive to broadminded people who do not believe that it is wise to criticize any one denomination or religious belief.”

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

Cultural Literacy: Voucher

Because the United States Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, has made school voucher programs the white paper in her policy brief, this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a voucher seems like something to put before my fellow educators. Public school parents and students should understand the implications of Secretary DeVos’s proposals for their communities and schools. The basic explanation on the attached worksheet is as good a place as any to start.

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.

Samuel Johnson and Ambrose Bierce on Patriotism

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Samuel Johnson

“In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit it is the first.”

Ambrose Bierce

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

The Weekly Text, August 2, 2019: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Muckraker and Social Reformer Jacob Riis

The Weekly Text for this first Friday in August is this reading on muckraker Jacob Riis and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. New York City teachers, nota bene: Riis’s name is on parks, monuments, and buildings in your town.

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: Affective Fallacy

“affective fallacy: A critical term denoting the confusion between what a literary work is and what it does. That is, a work should be judged solely on its literary components, not by its emotional (or affective) impact on the reader. It was first identified as a critical ‘error’ by Monroe Beardsley and W.K. Wimsatt in The Verbal Icon (1954). It is related to intentional fallacy, in which a work is judged according to what the author presumably intended to say or in relation to the author’s biography.”

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

Growth Spurt

If you teach middle-schoolers, this reading on growth spurts and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet might be something helpful for you. The Sheltered English Immersion class I took last winter for my Massachusetts license was held in a middle-school health classroom, and I saw a lot of stuff like these materials there.

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.

Historical Terms: Baskaap

[Here’s an ugly term and concept to consider in the present-day United States; we have elected representatives, alas, articulating garbage like this.]

baskaap (Afrikaan, ‘masterhood’). The underlying white supremacist ethos crudely expressing the ideology of Apartheid.

Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.

Book of Answers: Zora Neale Hurston

“What did Zora Neale Hurston do before becoming a novelist? Hurston was a folklorist who studied with anthropologist Franz Boas at Barnard College. In Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938), she compiled black traditions of the South and the Caribbean. Her novels include Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).”

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

Seldom (adv/adj)

This context clues worksheet on the adverb seldom–nota bene that it’s also used as an adjective–introduces a word in common enough use in English that students would benefit from knowing 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.