Category Archives: English Language Arts

For this week’s Text, heading into the Memorial Day weekend I assume most of us so badly need, I offer you this context clues worksheet on the transitive verb equip, and this one on the verb, also transitive, provision. These words mean roughly the same thing, excepting the the second definition of equip, which is transitive and means prepared. The second definition is used more as a participle with a linking verb.

For some reason, this draft blog post has lingered in my folder for a few months, and I cannot imagine why, or what my purpose was in putting it there in the first place. I think I wrote the above two context clues worksheets for a global studies lesson, then just folded them into this post. In using them, I recall I was surprised at how few students knew the verb equip. As a verb, I guess, provision is a little less often used to describe the act or preparation for an event, usually an expedition of some kind. That said, I can hear Shelby Foote, describing a battle in Ken Burns’ Civil War Documentary and using provision as a verb.

Anyway, to complement the worksheets published in the first paragraph, above, I also offer these two worksheets on Greek word roots iatr/o and icon/o. They mean, respectively, healing, medical treatment and image. Unlike other word root worksheets I post, these are short exercises designed to begin a class period by focusing and settling students. As I’ve said before about word roots, a corollary to the vocabulary building benefit of these exercises is passively training students to recognize patterns in language, the kind of deep-structure instruction that scholars in the learning sciences encourage teachers to deliver.

That’s it. I wish you a respectful and appropriately somber Memorial Day.

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.