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.

Constitution (n)

For a variety of reasons, now seems like as good a time as any to post a context clues worksheet on the noun constitution. This worksheet places the word in contexts meant to show its meaning as “the basic principles and laws of a nation, state, or social group that determine the powers and duties of the government and guarantee certain rights to the people in it”  and “a written instrument embodying the rules of a political or social organization.”

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: Ernest Hemingway on Gertrude Stein

“It’s a shame you never knew her before she went to pot. You know a funny thing, she never could write dialogue. It was terrible. She learned how to do it from my stuff… She never could forgive learning that and she was afraid people would notice it, where she’d learned it, so she had to attack me. It’s a funny racket, really. But I swear she was damned nice before she got ambitious.”

Ernest Hemingway, in Green Hills of Africa, 1935

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

The Weekly Text, September 1, 2017: A Complete Lesson Plan on the Most Commonly Used Prepositions

Of the seven units on the parts of speech I’ve built, the one on prepositions is the shortest. As I start writing this week’s Text, I realize that with this post I’ve already published three of the seven lessons in the unit–and one of them just last week.

This is the third lesson in the unit, on working with commonly used prepositions. There are, as with most of the lessons I post here, two do-now, Everyday Edit exercises to start the lesson, the first on the “Miracle Worker,” Anne Sullivan and the second on James Forten, a free Black man in Philadelphia. The center of this lesson is this scaffolded worksheet on working with commonly used prepositions. To complete it, students will benefit from access to this learning support on using prepositions, prepositional phrases, and compound prepositions. Finally, while delivering this lesson, I’m confident that you’ll find the teacher’s copy and answer key helpful.

That’s it. School starts on Tuesday! I hope the school year starts well for you.

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.

The Devil’s Dictionary: Abasement

“Abasement, n. A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000

The Weekly Text, August 25, 2017: A Lesson Plan on Using Prepositions with Pronouns in the Objective Case

Last spring, while teaching my unit on prepositions, I found I needed to revise and strengthen this lesson plan on using prepositions with pronouns in the objective case; as long as I had it out, I duplicated and set it aside for a future text, and that future has arrived, so here it is as a Weekly Text.

To teach this lesson you’ll need the two do-now exercises (and, as I’ve written here before, if you like Everyday Edits, the good people at Education World generously give them away), the first of which is an Everyday Edit on Charles Drew; the second, another Everyday Edit, this one on the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, you may need if classroom exigencies extend this lesson into a second day. The mainstay of this lesson is this scaffolded worksheet on using prepositions with the objective case of pronouns. Your students and you will probably find useful this learning support to accompany the worksheet.

I design my worksheets, as you’ll see explained in the About Weekly Texts on the home page banner, so that I can insert students’ names in them as both subject and object noun. This worksheet is, in terms of these insertions, complicated sufficiently that I’ve decided to include in this post this finished copy, ready for classroom use, of the worksheet to demonstrate how to fill the asterisks with subject and object nouns in the worksheet itself. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the worksheet which serves as the answer key as well.

That’s it. I hope this lesson is useful to you, and not marred by its prolixity.

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.

A Memo to Education “Reformers” from Sherwood Anderson

“The whole object of education is…to develop the mind. The mind should be a thing that works.”

Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

Rotten Reviews: George Bernard Shaw Assesses Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra

“To say that there is plenty of bogus characterization in it…is merely to say that it is by Shakespeare.”

George Bernard Shaw, Saturday Review 1897

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

Consent (vi)

Ah, summer, how quickly you wane! Two weeks from today I’ll be suffering through one more of the vapid, insufferable “professional development” sessions the administration of my school inflicts upon the faculty.

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb consent. Merriam-Webster tags it as intransitive, and if you think about its use, it’s hard to imagine a direct object following 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.

Robert Frost on Our Financial Institutions

“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back again when it begins to rain.”

Robert Frost

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

The Weekly Text, August 3, 2017: Two Context Clues Worksheets on Descend (vi/vt) and Descendant (n)

Here are two context clues worksheets on the verb descend and the noun descendant. As you will infer from the choice of the noun, these are the definitions of these words that relate to origins rather than moving in a downward direction. I like to use these early in the year in global studies classes.

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.