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.

Common English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Mean

Finally this morning, here is a worksheet on the verb mean as it is used with an infinitive. I mean to visit Coney Island this weekend.

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.

Fisher King

“Fisher King: One of the chief characters in medieval legends dealing with the quest for the Holy Grail. The Fisher King was the keeper of the Grail relics, including the spear of Longinus used to wound Jesus as he hung on the cross. The Fisher King suffered from a wound made by the same spear. The wound destroyed the Fisher King’s virility and, by a sympathetic transference, turned his realm into a wasteland. A new and purer guardian of the relics, in the form of the Grail hero, must intervene (see GALAHAD). The task of the hero is not simply to find the relics themselves, which had been stolen, but also to free the king so he may die a peaceful death and bring life and fertility back to the king’s realm. See WASTE LAND, THE.”

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

Cultural Literacy: Loch Ness Monster

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Loch Ness Monster, a subject of no small fascination for me when I was a child in school (which is why I have tagged it as high-interest material, which I suspect it will still be for a certain type of elementary school student). This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading, both longish compounds, so you may want to take a look at them if you have emergent readers or English language learners on your hands, and three comprehension questions.

Somewhere along the line, I gathered the impression that Nessie, as the monster is affectionately known, was definitively disproved as a hoax. The reading in this document does not mention it, nor, particularly, does the Wikipedia page for the Loch Ness Monster. (The page, at its bottom, however, does warn that the article “…may lend undue weight to fringe sources and hypotheses.” For my part, I remain–mostly–agnostic.)

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.

Term of Art: Systematic Phonics

“systematic phonics: Direct reading instruction that explicitly teaches the relationships between letters and sounds in a sequence of interconnected lessons.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

The Weekly Text, 27 October 2023: Styling Sentences Lesson 14, Using the Serial Comma

Believe it or not, after all these weeks, we’re down to the penultimate lesson in the Styling Sentences Unit: ergo, this week’s Text is the fourteenth lesson plan in the series, this one on what strikes me as an important area of English usage and punctuation, using the serial comma.

This lesson opens with this worksheet on parsing sentences to find adjectives. Here is the scaffolded and supported worksheet that is the centerpiece of the lesson. Finally, here is a learning support on using the serial comma.

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.

Common English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Manage

Alright, last but not least this morning, here is a worksheet on the verb manage as followed by an infinitive. It will take some time, but eventually I will manage to publish all the worksheets on gerunds and infinitives that I made the mistake of developing.

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.

12 Olympian Gods

Zeus (Jupiter) * Hera (Juno) * Poseidon (Neptune) * Aphrodite (Venus) * Athena (Minerva) * Apollo (Apollo) * Artemis (Diana) * Hermes (Mercury) * Dionysus (Bacchus) * Hades (Pluto) * Aries (Mars) *Hephaestus (Vulcan) * Hestia (Vesta)

The cult of six female goddesses paired with six male gods came to Greece from western Anatolia during the Iron Age, though the doubling up of a trinity of female goddesses, and then giving the appropriate male counterparts, was a familiar aspect of many ancient cultures. Hercules is first credited with organizing sacrifices to all twelve of the great gods who dwelt on Mount Olympus and the oldest such altar was associated with Athens. The precise names of the Olympian pantheon would shift during 1,000 years of worship, which is why thirteen deities have been listed. Hades, as Lord of the Underworld, was vulnerable to downgrading, especially in favor of Hestia/Vesta, while at other times Hephaestus could be exchanged for Hercules, and in the early period Dionysus held an equivocal position.

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

Cultural Literacy: Janus

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Janus, the “Roman god of doors and gateways and hence of beginnings,” as the four-sentence reading on this document explains. There are three comprehension questions accompanying the reading. I remember puzzling over Janus, the two-faced god, mostly because of the multiplicity and complexity of his myth and interpretation. As you probably know, Janus is represented with two faces, one young and one old, looking in opposite directions.

But did you know that the month of January is named for him? Or that to be Janus-faced is to be duplicitous, or two-faced? While I understand the image of Janus (if nothing else from watching films from the production company bearing his name), I have struggled for some reason with some of the abstractions that appear with his name on them.

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.

Colloquialism

“Colloquialism (noun): Spoken of conversational expression; familiar or informal English that falls between standard English and slang; everyday speech; an informal word or expression, or (loosely) a local or dialectical usage.

‘I had to learn American just like a foreign language. To learn it, I had to study and analyze it. As a result, when I use slang, colloquialisms, snide talk or any kind of off-beat language I do it deliberately.’ Raymond Chandler, Raymond Chandler Speaking.

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

The Weekly Text, 20 October 2023: Styling Sentences Lesson 13, The Compound Sentence with an Explanatory Statement

This week’s Text is the thirteenth lesson plan in the Styling Sentences Unit. This lesson deals with the compound sentence with an explanatory statement, with the two clauses separated by a colon. Like all of the lessons in this unit, about which, as I have prepared them for publication, I have unfortunately had many of my misgivings reinforced, this one aims to assist students in developing their own understanding of compound sentences, how to build them, and how to punctuate them.

This lesson opens with this worksheet on parsing sentences to find verbs. Here is the explanatory text with a learning support on the use of colons, the latter excerpted from Grant Barrett’s excellent manual Perfect English Grammar: The Indispensable Guide to Excellent Writing and Speaking (Berkeley: Zephyros Press, 2016). Finally, here is the scaffolded and supported worksheet that is the principal work of this lesson. There are mentor texts along with explanatory texts, so while the documents are relatively complete for this lesson, I still sense something is missing. Or is it that this lesson is just too much for the average high school student? I like to think not, but what do you think?

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.