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.

A Nineteenth-Century, British, View of Education from Thomas Hughes

“Life isn’t all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.”

Thomas Hughes

Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Pt. I, Ch. 2 (1857)

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Word Root Exercise: Lex

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word root lex, which means, as below, word, law, reading. It turns up in a variety of places, including the frequently used lexicon.

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.

Lex and Its Others: Lexeme, Lexical, and Lexicon

[Nota bene that the Latin word root lex means “word, law, reading,” in other words, language and its uses.]

“Lexeme: 1. A word considered as a lexical unit, in abstraction from the specific forms it takes in specific constructions, e.g. the verb ‘sing’ or ‘to sing,’ in abstraction from the varying word forms sing, sings, sang, sung, singing. Compare lemma. 2. Any other unit, e.g. a morpheme, seen has having lexical rather than grammatical meaning.

Lexical: 1. Assigned to, or involving units assigned to, a lexicon. Thus a lexical entry is an entry in the lexicon; a lexical item or lexical unit may be any word, etc. which has such an entry; rules are lexically governed if they apply only to structures including certain lexical units. 2. Specifically of words etc. distinguished as having a lexical as opposed to a grammatical meaning, or to members of a lexical as opposed to a functional category.

Lexicon: An aspect of language, or part of a linguist’s account of language, that is centered on units that have individual meanings. Distinguished as such from grammar or syntax as concerned with structures in the abstract. But structures in grammar themselves reflect the properties of the lexical units that enter into them, which may be very general or very specific. Therefore the precise scope of a lexicon, as a description of the properties of or assigned to individual units, will vary from one theory of language to another. In one account, it has been a simple subcomponent of a generative grammar, in others the basis, in itself, for most if not all specific grammatical patterns; in some an unstructured list, in others an elaborate network of entries related by lexical rules, and so on.

Usually distinguished as a theoretical concept, from a dictionary, as part of a practical description: hence e.g. a posited mental lexicon, not ‘mental dictionary.’”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Parsing Sentences Worksheets: Adverbs

Here, if you can use them, are four parsing sentences worksheets for adverbs. I use these in a variety of ways in my classroom, hence the plethora of categories and tags.

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.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“A fantasy novel (1964) by Roald Dahl (1916-90), in which Charlie Buckett wins a ticket that allows him to visit a chocolate factory owned by Mr Willy Wonka and manned by tiny men called Oompa-Loompas. It was filmed as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), with Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. Dahl’s sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, was published in 1971.”

[A second filmed version of this book, starring Johnny Depp, appeared in 2005 as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.]

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

Decimate (vt)

Here is a context clues worksheet the verb decimate. It’s used transitively, and most frequently, strictly speaking, erroneously. It’s from the Latin (nota bene the Latin root dec, which means ten, and shows up in words like decade and decimal–a form of counting that proceeds in units of ten) and means, in its definition from Ancient Rome, where it was a means of disciplining Legions, “to select by lot and kill every tenth man of.” However, over time, it has come to mean “to reduce drastically especially in number” and “to cause great destruction or harm to.”

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.

Mannerism

“Style of art and architecture that emerged in the period from ca. 1520 to ca. 1590, characterized by a reaction to the harmony of the High Renaissance, an ideal of virtuosity for its own sake, and a concomitant preoccupation with the ambiguous and discordant. Exemplified in the works of El Greco, Pontormo, Parmigianino, and (late) Michelangelo.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

Independent Practice: Socrates

Here is an independent practice worksheet on Socrates. If you teach global studies, or whatever your school district calls it, this might be a document your students could use.

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.

Book of Answers: The Tenth Muse

“‘Whom did some classical writers call the ‘tenth muse?’ Sappho (b. 612 B.C.), a lyric poet whose work exists only in fragments. Married, she lived in Lesbos and led a group of women who were devoted to music and poetry.”

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

Cultural Literacy: Suburbanization

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on suburbanization, which is a concept that probably comes up at some point in the United States History curriculum.

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.