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.

Cultural Literacy: Riot Act

If you want students to learn idioms, this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Riot Act, or more specifically being read the riot act, might help.

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 Reviews: Max Eastman on Ernest Hemingway

“It is of course a commonplace that Hemingway lacks the serene confidence that he is a full-sized man.”

Max Eastman

New Republic, 1933

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

Ball (n) and Bawl (vi/vt)

Here are five worksheets on the homophones ball and bawl. Respectively, they are a noun and a verb with both intransitive and transitive uses.

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: Metonymy

“The figurative or symbolic use of the name of one thing for that of another with which it is associated, or of an attribute for the whole, e.g., ‘brass’ for military officers. Adjective: metonymic, metonymical; adverb: metonymically; noun: metonym.

‘A full set would also have included the brazen Perelman pun (‘My choler wilted’ for ‘My anger subsided’)…the Perelman micro-metonymy (‘Hanna listened to the veins throbbing in my temple’ for ‘I was speechless with anger at Hanna’) and the Perelman extrapolation of cliché into metaphor (‘The whole aviary in my head burst into song’ for ‘I was bird-brained’).’” Tom Wolfe, The New York Times

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

Debunk (vt)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb debunk. It’s used transitively only. I’m hard-pressed to imagine a word more important at the moment for any responsible and engaged citizen of a republic to know. As teachers, we ought to preoccupied by making sure students understand this verb both in word and deed.

.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: Adaptation

“Broadly speaking, the recasting of a work to fit another, such as the recasting of novels and plays as film or television scripts. For example, Stephen Hero, A Passage to India, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and Les Liaisons dangereuses as stage plays; The Forsythe Saga, Daniel Deronda, War and Peace, Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown as television dramas. Sometimes a cycle or sequence is adapted: for instance, the dramatization of some of the Canterbury Tales as a musical comedy (1967). Short stories and poems are often equally suitable.

As an extension there are works like the Peyton Place and Colditz of which episodes continued to be presented long after the original stories had been used up.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Sham (n/adj)

Here are two context clues worksheets on the word sham, used as both a noun and an adjective.

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.

Brewer’s Curious Titles: Brave New World

“A dystopian novel (1932) by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963). Its portrayal of an imagined future state in which men and women are processed into standardized batches by genetic engineering and lifelong conditioning was originally conceived as a challenge to the claims of H.G. Wells (1866-1946) for the desirability of eugenics. The title derives from Miranda’s exclamation in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611):

‘O brave new world,

That has such people in’t!’

V.i”

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

Independent Practice Worksheet: Peter the Great

Here is an independent practice worksheet on Peter the Great that I use in sophomore global studies classes. It’s a short reading with a few comprehension questions. Make sure to use it on days when you’re studying Russian history.

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.

Exuberant (adj)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective exuberant that’s hot off the press. I just wrote 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.