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.

Concepts in Sociology: Acculturation

Last September, about four days before the beginning of the school year, I learned that I was tasked with teaching a sociology elective in my school. There was, of course, no curriculum. It happens that I know something about the domain, but not enough to teach it effectively.

So, I went write to work reading, taking notes, accumulating text, and trying to synthesize it all into something that had relatively expansive scope and logical sequence. As usual, other responsibilities intervened, and I often found myself without a proper lesson to teach. Which brings us to this worksheet on acculturation. I prepared this, and sixty-nine others like it, on the fly when I needed something in a hurry.

So, if you see the “Concepts in Sociology” header on a blog post, it will be one of these documents. I’d be interested, as below and always, if you use these materials in your classroom and how. Most of them are relatively short, and might be appropriate for do-now exercises at the beginning of a class period. Many of them might be usefully integrated into social studies or English language arts lessons, depending on the texts and approach you’re using in those domains.

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.

Bowdlerize

“bowdlerize: To expurgate a book. In 1818 an English physician, Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), gave to the world a ten-volume edition of Shakespeare’s works ‘in which nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.’ Bowdler later treated Gibbon’s Decline and Fall in the same way. Hence, we have the words bowdlerist, bowdlerizer, bowdlerism, bowdlerization, etc.”

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

Cultural Literacy: William Blake

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on William Blake. When I began teaching in New York City in 2003, his poem “The Chimney Sweeper” was included on at least a couple of New York State’s high-stakes Regents’ Tests–so I imagine I prepared this document to introduce students–and with a four-sentence reading with three comprehension questions, I think this worksheet serves its purpose–to Blake.

In my high school year, after being directed toward William Blake by Allen Ginsberg and The Fugs (and yes, I stipulate I went to high school in a very different time than today), I started reading him and have never stopped.

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.

Wangle (vi/vt)

This context clues worksheet on the verb wangle, I think, came into being when this intransitive and transitive verb surfaced as the Word of the Day on Merriam-Webster, most likely during the pandemic. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard this word used without an invitation following it. In any case, used intransitively, wangle means “to resort to trickery or devious methods.” Transitively, and this is where your direct object, the commonly used an invitation comes into play, wangle means “to adjust or manipulate for personal or fraudulent ends,”  to make or get by devious means, and finagle.

I’m hard pressed to defend this as necessary word in the high school vocabulary. It has an onomatopoeic quality that probably, when wangle is used with an invitation, will provide sufficient context for students to pick it up passively–especially since the word will most likely be used in a conversation about a social event. Finally, to as I prepared this this post, I couldn’t help but thing once again about Joseph Mitchell’s warning about “tinsel words.”

But what do you think?

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.

Czeslaw Milosz on the Intellectually Smug Comfort of Dialectics

“Paradoxical as it may seem, it is this subjective impotence that convinces the intellectual that the one method is right. Everything proves it is right. Dialectics: I predict that the house will burn; then I pour gas over the stove. The house burns; my prediction is fulfilled. Dialectics: I predict that a work of art incompatible with socialist realism will be worthless. Then I place the artist in conditions in which such work is worthless. My prediction is fulfilled.”

Excerpted from: Milosz, Czeslaw. Trans. Jane Zielonko. The Captive Mind. New York: Vintage, 1981.

Common English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Choose

Here is a worksheet on the verb choose as followed by an infinitive. I’ll not choose to write any more subpar curricular material.

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.

A Pair of Learning Supports on Ellipsis Points

As I mentioned in a post last week, a recent editing job caused me to develop some learning supports on punctuation; this week’s is a pair of learning supports on using ellipsis points. The text is drawn, as with the previous week’s post on using slashes, from June Casagrande’s The Best Punctuation Book, Period. (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2014) and Susan Thurman’s The Only Grammar Book You’ll Ever Need (Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2003).

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.

Coda

“Coda (noun): A concluding part of a literary work, often as a set piece that rounds out or brings another; culminating passage; peroration.

‘The message was the same each time—learn to love thyself—and was usually tacked on as abruptly as those codas that once concluded episodes of Father Knows Best. Frank Rich, The New York Times.'”

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

The Weekly Text, Friday 16 June 2023: History of Hip-Hop Lesson 15, Public Enemy Picks up the Baton

This week’s Text offers the fifteenth lesson plan of the History of Hip-Hop Unit, this one on one of the seminal groups in the genre, Public Enemy. The lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Marcus Garvey. This is a full-page document with a reading of four sentences, two of them relatively simple compounds, and seven comprehension questions. A bit longer, in other words, than the typical do-now exercise.

Because of Public Enemy’s importance to the genre, there are an inordinate number of materials to use with this lesson. I’ve tended to use them all, but obviously you can pick and choose. So, for starters, here is a reading on Public Enemy along with its comprehension worksheet. Secondarily–or primarily, if you prefer–here are the lyrics to “Fight the Power”, one of the group’s best known songs and the opening theme to Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing, along with the analytical reflection worksheet that accompanies it.

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.

Oscar Wilde on Hypocrisy

“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”

Oscar Wilde

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.