Moving right along, here is an independent practice worksheet on Ivan the Terrible. He certainly typifies the problem of absolute power and absolute corruption, and all that.
The question is, in 2020, which world leader most closely resembles Ivan in temperament and action/
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.
“Research shows that depth of vocabulary matters to reading comprehension. Children identified as having difficulty in reading comprehension (but who can decode well) do not have the depth of word knowledge that typical readers do. When asked to provide a word definition, they provide fewer attributes. When asked to produce examples of categories (“name as many flowers as you can) they produce fewer. They have a harder time describing the meaning of figurative language, like the expression ‘a pat on the back.’ They are slower and more error-prone in judging if two words are synonyms, although they have no problem making a rhyming judgement.”
Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel T. The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.
Given the current state of human civilization, this worksheet on the Greek root dys ought to be useful. It means bad, difficult, abnormal, and impaired. This is another of those roots that shows up all over the English language. For instance, if you work in a public school, there is, I will hazard a guess, a very good chance that the adjective dysfunctional has crossed your lips on more than one occasion.
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.
“Neologism (noun): A newly coined word or phrase, or novel expression in increasing usage (as contrasted with a nonce word); a new meaning for an old word. Adjective: neological, neologistic; noun: neology, neologist; verb: neologize.
‘He landed in lexicography footnotes first, with an appendix to his M.A. thesis—listing neologisms committed by English romantic poets.’” Israel Shenker, Harmless Drudges.
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun accolade. At the very least, graduating high school seniors probably ought to know this word–particularly if they present or receive accolades in the graduation ceremony itself.
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.
“Take your long novel down the street to my friend William Heinemann who specializes in fiction, and sit down and write a play for me–I think you’d do that well.”
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“The author writes to please himself rather than to please the novel reading public and accordingly his novel lacks popular qualities…the average reader may be pardoned if he fails to become interested in the intricate family relations involved in the opening chapters of the book…from beginning to end there is not one really admirable character, and it is hard to feel sympathy even for those who undergo sorrow and suffering.”
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“…the slight plot, the fact that all the characters are distinctly British, both seem to make it clear that the volume would not have any real sale in this country….”
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
If there is a better time than a warm afternoon in late June to post this reading on baseball cards, I can’t imagine when that would be. Here is 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.
While I realize that it’s not most people’s idea of fun, I like to spend time in cemeteries. I appreciate funerary art. I enjoy the solemnity and quiet of cemeteries. I benefit from the perspective cemeteries provide. And, since the advent of the smartphone, I enjoy using cemeteries as a primary source in historical research. One can learn a lot about the demographics of a town by its deceased citizens.
So, I am pleased to see that my pal Walter Wallace, in Springfield, Vermont, has worked with a local cable access production company to offer this video on Puritan symbolism on gravestones at the Rockingham Meeting House, in Rockingham Vermont, where he is a docent. Incidentally, this meeting house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.
Great work, Walter!
“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
Billy Bragg, an British singer I’ve been listening to for over thirty years, announced yesterday on his Twitter feed that New York City will rename part of Mermaid Avenue on Coney Island (where Woody lived, and which is also the name of an excellent trio of albums of Woody’s songs by Mr. Bragg and the American rock band Wilco) as Woody Guthrie Way. Furthermore, this years Mermaid Parade features Arlo Guthrie as King Neptune and Nora Guthrie as Queen Mermaid. They are, you will perceive, Woody’s children. If you’re in Brooklyn, or anywhere near Coney Island, I urge you to attend this cool event.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Woody Guthrie in celebration of the events limned above, and of Mr. Guthrie as an American treasure.
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.
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