Category Archives: Independent Practice

This is material either specifically designed for or appropriate to use for what is more commonly known as “homework.”

Common Errors in English Usage: Heavily (adv), Strongly (adv)

OK, finally this afternoon (and once again from Paul Brians’ magisterial usage manual, Common Errors in English Usage, which he very generously gives away in a variety of places), here is a worksheet on differentiating the adverbs heavily and strongly. This is a one-page worksheet with ten modified cloze exercises to supply students with structured practice in using these two words.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Gress, Grad, Gradi, and Grade

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word roots gress, grad, gradi, and grade. They mean to step and to go. Unsurprisingly, they are at the base of such high-frequency words in English as egress, digress, graduate, and regress, and the many parts of speech in which these words end up –e.g. regressive, graduation, regressive and aggressive.

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.

Iran Hostage Crisis

Here is a reading on the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and 1980 along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I remember these years vividly–I saw the first headlines about the crisis as I was passing a newsstand in the Miami airport en route to Jamaica. It was a fraught time. I have a minor quibble with this reading in that it minimizes the brutality of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, who was a genuinely nasty piece of work. And even though it is perhaps beyond the ken of this reading, it would have required little more than a sentence to mention that the Shah came to power subsequent to the 1953 coup d’etat in Iran, which deposed the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh.

The 1953 coup was engineered by both the United States Central Intelligence and the British MI6. In other words, as Dee Dee Ramone once put it, “Commando, involved again.”

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 Weekly Text, 12 November 2021: A Review Lesson on the Use of Pronouns in Declarative Sentences

This week’s Text is the penultimate lesson in the 13-lesson unit on pronouns I engineered several years ago, and have been working on ever since. It is basically a pre-assessment review lesson to prepare student for the final lesson, a guided mastery exercise in which they review and recapitulate all the foregoing lessons.

I open this lesson with this Everyday Edit worksheet on “Women Get the Vote.” If the lesson enters a second day for whatever reason, here is another Everyday Edit, this one on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Here is the scaffolded worksheet for this lesson that is its primary work. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of same. I’ll put up the final lesson soon, and then there will be a 13-lesson unit on pronouns available in its entirety on Mark’s Text Terminal.

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.

Stephanie Ericsson’s “The Ways We Lie”

When the English teacher with whom I work recently introduced Stephanie Ericsson’s essay “The Ways We Lie” late last week, I’d never previously seen it. If you search it, you’ll see that it is evidently in use in a number of schools around the country. It’s not especially profound, but it does touch on some of the philosophical issues that lying and truth-telling raise. Ms. Ericsson has enjoyed a successful career as a writer and and actor, the latter of which surprised me.

In any case, here is a copy of the essay itself along with a contextual and learning support that I composed to attend it. The essay is in Microsoft Word, though I didn’t render it so, so I cannot vouch for it accuracy or fidelity; the contextual and learning support I did write, and, as below, if you find any problems with it, please advise. I copy-edited it twice, which doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain lapses or errors. There is a reason why professional writers–which I am not, alas–use the services of their publishers’ copy-editing offices.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Di, Diplo

Here is a worksheet on the Greek word roots di and diplo. They mean two and double. You’ll find these roots underneath an everyday word like dilemma, but on this worksheet (which, if the book from which it is adapted is to be believed, contains words commonly found on the SAT), you’ll find it at the base of linguistic terms like digraph and diphthong, and scientific words like dichloride and dichromate.

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.

Common Errors in English Usage: Healthy (adj), Healthful (adj)

Here is a English usage worksheet on distinguishing between the adjectives healthy and healthful when deploying these words in prose. This is a full-page worksheet with a one-paragraph reading and ten modified cloze exercises. Like all the materials under the masthead “Common Errors in English Usage,” this one is adapted from Paul Brians’ excellent book of the same name; did you know he allows access to it for free at the Washington State University website?

In this reading, Professor Brians subtly argues that the difference between healthy and healthful has eroded to such a degree that the words are indistinguishable now. So, after working with them in these exercises, students can debate whether or not we need both of these words in our lexicons.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Coup de Grace

It’s a relatively commonly used Gallicism in English, so here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the noun coup de grace. It means “a deathblow or death shot administered to end the suffering of one mortally wounded.” and “a decisive finishing blow, act, or event.” The latter definition obtains in the vernacular, where this noun finds use most frequently to mean “a final blow.”

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.

Annual Health Exam

OK, health teachers, if you can use them, here is a reading on the importance of an annual health exam along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. For a one-page reading, this document pack in a lot of information–perhaps all that one needs to understand why one should get a physical every year.

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 Weekly Text, 5 November 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “False Alarm”

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “False Alarm.” I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Gallicism enfant terrible.

To conduct your investigation of this misdemeanor, you’ll need this PDF of the illustration and questions that serve as evidence and interrogative in the case. And here is the typescript of the answer key. And that’s it for another week.

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.