Category Archives: Essays/Readings

This category often, but not always, designates a piece of my own writing on a topic on a variety of topics. So, if you are interested in listening to me bloviate, click on this category! The Essays/Readings category may also include extended quotes from books, particularly on pedagogy, literacy, terms of art, and philosophy.

Coordination and Subordination

Posted on October 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

“I want to pause here to digress on the seemingly underwhelming concepts of coordination and subordination. I will ask you to stifle your yawn as I acknowledge that they are easy to dismiss–ancient, faintly risible, uttered once long ago by acolytes of sentence diagramming in the era of chalk dust. They smack of grammar for grammar’s sake, and almost nobody cares about that. Teachers instead seek mostly to simply make sure the sentences work and dispense with the parsing of parts. It is so much simpler to tell kids to go with ‘sounds right’ (an idea that inherently discriminates against those for whom the sounds of language are not happily ingrained by luck or privilege) or to make the odd episodic correction and not worry about the principle at work.

But coordination and subordination are in fact deeply powerful principles worth mastering. They describe the ways that ideas are connected, the nuances that yoke disparate thoughts together. It is the connections as much as the ideas that make meaning. To master conjunctions is to be able to express that two ideas are connected but that one is more important than the other, that one is dependent on the other, that one is contingent on the other, that the two ideas exist in contrast or conflict. Mastering that skill is immensely important not just to writing but to reading. Students who struggle with complex text can usually understand the words and clauses of a sentence; it is the piecing together of the interrelationships among them that most often poses the problem. They understand the first half of a sentence but miss the cue that questions its veracity in the second half. And so without mastery of the syntax of the relationships–which is what coordination and subordination are–the sentence devolves–for weak readers–into meaninglessness.”

Doug Lemov

Excerpted from: Hochman, Judith C., and Natalie Wexler. The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking through Writing in All Subjects and Grades. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference

Tagged , ,

Term of Art: Orthography

Posted on October 16, 2019 | Leave a comment

“orthography: The formal name for spelling–the system for representing spoken language in written form. The spelling of English can be difficult to learn due to so many irregular spelling patterns. For example, ‘do,’ ‘due,’ and ‘dew’ are all pronounced the same way. English has 44 sounds, but it has only 26 letters.

The letter-sound correspondence is essential for reading, as is the sound-letter correspondence for correct spelling. Difficulties in these relationships can result in language disabilities.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , ,

Term of Art: Critical Thinking

Posted on October 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

“critical thinking: The trained ability to think clearly and dispassionately. Critical thinking is logical thinking based on sound evidence, involving the ability to gather and and analyze information and solve problems; it is the opposite of biased, sloppy thinking. A critical thinker can accurately and fairly explain a point of view that he or she does not agree with. Critical thinking requires close attention to facts, evidence, knowledge, and how knowledge is used, particularly in situations in which the facts are in conflict or the evidence permits more than one interpretation. This kind of reasoning is especially relevant for democratic life. Critics of the term think that educators have turned it into an empty cliche, since there is a tendency to refer to any sort of thinking as critical thinking.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

Leave a comment

Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , ,

Cultural Literacy: Whiskey Rebellion

Posted on October 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Whiskey Rebellion for you United States history teachers.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in Essays/Readings, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , , ,

Term of Art: Zone of Proximal Development

Posted on October 4, 2019 | Leave a comment

“zone of proximal development: The gap between the level of a student’s independent function and how he or she may perform learning tasks with help. This term was coined by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) and refers to the fact that it is crucial to provide help before a child gets frustrated. Failure can be avoided when teachers are aware of a student’s zone of proximal development and provide just enough support to enable students to achieve a goal that would not have been possible independently.

This concept may play a key role in educational approaches, in that it represents a way of thinking about what is involved in meeting students’ needs, and of understanding teaching and learning as a dynamic and developmental process, rather than as a static juxtaposition of instruction and learning readiness.

This theory allows a teacher to see a student’s learning problems not as impediments but rather as a starting point for a process of development that challenges students within the scope of what they are able to master successfully with the appropriate instruction. An approach to teaching that incorporates this concept must also mean that a teacher begins to teach a child at his or her current level, rather than at arbitrary curricular standards.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Leave a comment

Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , , ,

Historical Terms: Balance of Power

Posted on October 4, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Balance of power: Diplomatic policy aimed at securing peace, particularly in Europe, by preventing any one state of alignment of states from attaining hegemony or military strength dangerous to the independence and liberty of the others. The policy is thus based on the maintenance of a counter-force equal to that of potential hegemonists. Britain had pursued such a policy for centuries to counter French predominance, but from 1904 to 1914 attempted to balance German power through the Entente Cordiale. A balance emerged between the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy. Between the world wars, Britain at first attempted to balance French power by facilitating the rapid recovery of Germany, but later abandoned her balance of power policy in favor of appeasement….”

 Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.

Leave a comment

Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged ,

The Weekly Text, October 4, 2019, Hispanic Heritage Month 2019 Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the War of the Philippines Insurrection

Posted on October 4, 2019 | Leave a comment

When I prepare materials for Hispanic Heritage Month (of which, alas, as I previously mentioned in these pages, I currently suffer a shortage), I tend to perceive the materials along a narrow range of topics, related almost solely to people and events in the Americas. As this web page from Catholic Relief Services observes, “Hispanics and Latinos are not necessarily the same. Hispanics are descended from Spanish speaking populations. Latinos are people of Latin American descent.” I’m no expert on this. If you are, I’d be greatly obliged if you could weigh in on this topic.

What I do know about the Hispanic World derives both from my own education and my travels across South America. For me, the most salient characteristic of the Hispanic world is that it was, in its entirety, subject to imperial exploitation and expropriation. Therefore, one of the unfortunate products of the Spanish presence in the new world is that legacy.

In any case, I think under the definitions limned above (again, if you have scholarly knowledge of this, I would be extremely grateful for some clarification of this issue), I can safely post, as part of Mark’s Text Terminal’s observance of Hispanic Heritage Month 2019, this reading on the War of Philippines Insurrection and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in Essays/Readings, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

Tagged , , , , ,

Term of Art: Code Switching

Posted on September 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

“code switching: Switching in speech between different languages, dialects, etc. E.g. two business associates meet and chat in one language; the meeting becomes formal and they switch to another. Often analyzed into subtypes, e.g. as occurring within sentences or at sentence boundaries. Sometimes distinguished from code mixing, or from borrowing; sometimes not.

The term ‘code’ is loosely used of any language or distinct variety of a language, whether or not it is actually thought of as a code (like the Morse code or a legal code) in any illuminating sense.”

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

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , , , ,

John Dewey on Interest, Motivation, and Engagement

Posted on September 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Much assistance in the selection of appropriate material may be derived by considering the eagerness and closeness of observation that attend the following of a story or drama. Alertness of observation is at its height whenever there is plot interest. Why? The balanced combination of the old and the new, of the familiar and the unexpected…alternatives are suggested, but are left ambiguous, so that our whole being questions: What happened next? Which way did things turn out? When an individual is engaged in doing or making something, there is an analogous situation. Something is going to come of what is present, but just what is doubtful. The plot is unfolding toward success or failure, but just when or how is uncertain. Hence the keen and tense observation that attends construction. [Even] when the subject matter is of a more impersonal sort, the same principle of movement toward a denouement may apply. Mere change [in the experiences and situations] is not enough. The changes must (like the incidents of a well-arranged story or plot) take place in a certain cumulative order.”

John Dewey

How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

Leave a comment

Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , ,

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin

Posted on September 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

[Bakthin was all the rage, and his work justly influential, when I was an undergraduate in the early 1990s. When I was in the used book business, his books were scarce and therefore easily saleable. I include him here because I myself found Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics a fascinating book, but also because Bakthin was part of a circle of intellectuals in the Soviet Union that included the educational theorist Lev Vygotsky.]

“Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich: (1895-1975) Russian philosopher and literary critic. In 1929, Bakhtin was sentenced to six years’ exile in Kazakhstan and subsequently sought obscurity to hide from Stalin’s purges. Bakhtin introduced the notion of novelistic discourse as distinct from poetry; he characterized it as inherently ‘dialogical’ and open-ended, with potentially parodic and surprising features. His work began to be will-received in the 1950s, and he published Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1929; 2nd ed 1963; tr 1984) and Rabelais and His World (1965; tr 1968). Bakhtin might have also been the author of the more ostensibly Marxist works of Voloshinov (Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, 1929; tr 1973) and Medvedev (The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, 1928; tr 1978). Bakhtin’s ideas about dialogue were also developed in ethical discussions of aesthetics in Art and Answerability (tr 1990). His concept of the “carnivalesque,” a disruptive and parodic genre of social behavior, is notorious.”

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

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , , ,