Category Archives: Reference

These are materials for teachers and parents, and you’ll find, in this category, teachers copies and answer keys for worksheets, quotes related to domain-specific knowledge in English Language Arts and social studies, and quotes on issues of professional concern. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Word Origins: Acme

Posted on April 24, 2026 | Leave a comment

“acme: [L16th] In Greek akme meant ‘point’ or ‘pinnacle, highest point.’ Its use dates from the late 15th century, although for the next hundred years or so it was consciously used as a Greek word and written in Greek letters. For many people their first exposure to the word comes from the ‘Looney Tunes’ cartoons featuring the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, where the characters buy products from the Acme company. ‘Acme’ was a real brand name for various US firms in the last two decades of the 19th century, chosen in part because the word comes near the top of any alphabetical list of suppliers. Acne [M19th] the skin condition, has a similar root. The idea is that all those red pimples are little points sticking up from someone’s face.

Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

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Neil Young

Posted on April 24, 2026 | Leave a comment

“Neil Young: (b. 1945) Canadian singer and songwriter. Born in Toronto, he began his career as a folksinger in Winnipeg and later moved to Los Angeles, where he formed the rock group Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills. In 1968 he released a solo album; in 1969 he joined Stills, David Crosby, and Graham Nash to form Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. With a new band, Crazy Horse, he had great success with albums such as Harvest (1972) and Comes a Time (1978). In the 1980s he experimented with rockabilly and electronic music.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Rayonism

Posted on April 17, 2026 | Leave a comment

“Rayonism: A Russian movement, a short-lived offshoot of Cubism and a parallel to Futurism, started in 1913 by Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. Their emphasis on rendering parallel and crossed beams of light to suggest the fourth dimension was important to the development of Suprematism.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Term of Art: Recall

Posted on April 17, 2026 | Leave a comment

“recall:  A term used to describe the ability to retrieve information from long-term memory. Recall is involved in a broad range of tasks, from remembering a phone number to recalling information for a school exam. While useful as a descriptive term, it does not refer to a specific area of cognitive function.

Difficulty recalling information may be cause by a number of different learning problems. This may include problems imprinting information during processing because of poor attention or short-term memory, as well as difficulty with rapid retrieval tasks that are typically found in expressive language disorders.”

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

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Edmund Wilson

Posted on April 17, 2026 | Leave a comment

Edmund Wilson: (1895-1972) U.S. critic and essayist. Born in Red Bank, New Jersey, he attended Princeton University and initially worked as a reporter and magazine writer. Much of his writing, in which he probed diverse topics with scholarship and common sense in clear and precise prose, appeared in The New Republic and the New Yorker. Among his influential critical works are Axel’s Castle (1931), a survey of the Symbolist poets; To the Finland Station (1940), a study of the thinkers who set the stage for the Russian Revolution; and Patriotic Gore (1962), analyzing the American Civil War literature. His other writings include plays, poetry, the short-story collection Memories of Hecate County (1946), and five volumes of posthumously published journals. He was widely regarded as the leading critic of his time.

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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The Weekly Text, 17 April 2026: The Writing Revolution Learning Supports V; Expository Words Learning Supports

Posted on April 17, 2026 | Leave a comment

At least for the moment, we have (finally!) reached the end of planning materials posts for The Writing Revolution. What you should know, and possibly dread, is that I have quite a lot of materials based in the methods of The Writing Revolution in various stages of development. So those will appear here eventually.

For this morning, however, let me post the last two learning supports, these on expository words:

V-A*Argumentative Nouns and Verbs

V-B*Expository Words

And even though there are only these two items on it, here is the table of contents for these two documents. And, if it is of any use to you, here is the the complete table of contents as I use it for all the learning supports excerpted or adapted from The Writing Revolution.

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.

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Term of Art: Social Studies

Posted on March 27, 2026 | Leave a comment

“social studies: A broad conglomeration of school studies that includes history, economics, geography, government, civics, and sociology, as well as consumer education, personal decision making, current events, global studies, environmental studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, and other nondisciplinary studies related to contemporary issues and the social sciences.”

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

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Word Origins: Ache

Posted on March 27, 2026 | Leave a comment

“ache: [OE] The word ache is a good example of the way that English spelling and pronunciation have developed and in many cases have diverged from each other. The noun comes from Old English and used to be pronounced “aitch” (like the letter H), whereas the verb was originally spelled ake and pronounced the way ache is today. Around 1700, people started pronouncing the noun like the verb. The spelling of the noun has survived, but the word is said in the way the verb (ake) used to be. The modern spelling is largely due to Dr. Johnson, who mistakenly assumed that the word came from Greek akhos ‘pain.’ Other pairs of words that have survived into modern English with k-for-the-verb and ch-for-the-noun spellings include speak and speech and break and breach.:

Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

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The Weekly Text, 10 April 2026: The Writing Revolution Learning Supports IV; Punctuation Learning Supports

Posted on March 27, 2026 | Leave a comment

Alright, let’s move along with another Weekly Text dealing with materials aligned with Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler’s The Writing Revolution (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017).

Even though there are only two items in this post, I nonetheless include this table of contents in case you are assembling your own table of contents from this series of posts. And without further ado, here are two learning supports.

IV-A*Using Colons and Semicolons Versions 1, 2, and 3 (i.e. three supports in one document)

IV-B*Using Parentheses Versions 1 and 2 (i.e. two supports in one document)

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.

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Quattrocento

Posted on March 27, 2026 | Leave a comment

“Quattrocento: (It. four hundred) The 15th century, used especially when referring to Italian art and literature of that century.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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