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.

The Weekly Text, April 30, 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Relative Pronouns

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the relative pronoun. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on limericks; in the event that you extend the lesson into a second day, here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on Thurgood Marshall, the late civil rights jurist and Supreme Court Justice. (Incidentally, if your students respond favorably to that Everyday Edit–mine generally did–you will find that the good people at Education World give away a yearlong supply of them.) This scaffolded worksheet on relative pronouns is the principal work of this lesson. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the worksheet to ease delivering this lesson.

The relative pronouns in common use are who, whom, whose, what, which, that, and the –ever forms: whoever, whatever, whichever, and whomever, and they are what this lesson addresses. So, if you want your students to develop an understanding of using these words, I hope these documents abet that cause.

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.

Empaquetage

“Empaquetage: A special form of New Realism associated chiefly with Bulgarian artist Christo, which consists of packaging objects with common wrapping materials, especially plastic sheeting. The best known empaquetages (wrappings) have been done on buildings, although smaller objects (such as live women) and larger forms (such as cliffs) have been packaged.”

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

The Devil’s Dictionary: Teetotaler

“Teetotaler, n. One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally, sometimes tolerably totally.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. 

Term of Art: Learning Modalities

“learning modalities: The way in which information is received and expressed, such as visual, tactile, auditory, or kinesthetic. Generally, individuals have strengths in a certain modality and learn better when information is presented through that channel. For example, an individual who whose strongest learning modality is visual will have difficulty learning information given by lecture alone, with no visual aids such as notes on the board.

Research shows that since people have different learning strengths, it is better to design lessons what use more than one modality, such as a combination of visual and auditory. This allows all learners, including those with learning disabilities, to access information using their strongest learning ability.”

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

A Learning Support on Five Kinds of Sentences

Here is a learning support on five kinds of sentences. I grabbed this from Sylvan Barnet and Marcia Stubbs’ Barnet and Stubbs Practical Guide to Writing with Readings, Seventh Edition (New York: Harper Collins, 1995). I used an earlier edition of this book for the very first college course I took in the spring of 1990. When I mentioned my admiration for the utility and ease of use of the book, a friend of mine thoughtfully made me a gift of the edition cited above.

Anyway, this learning support doesn’t deal with the four kinds of sentences, i.e. declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory, for which I am currently preparing learning supports which will appear here in the near future. This document deals with syntactical structures, to wit, the simple, compound, complex, and complex-compound sentences, as well as the sentence fragment. It’s one page, so it’s simple but (I hope) helpful because of that simplicity.

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.

Book of Answers: The Decameron

“What does the title of Boccaccio’s The Decameron (1350-52) mean? It means “ten days” and refers to the number of days the narrators spend telling stories. One hundred stories are told by seven women and three men during the Black Death of 1348.”

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

22 High-Leverage Practices for K-12 Teachers

Very quickly on this Friday morning, here is something that might be useful to teachers and parents, to wit a list of 22 high-leverage practices for K-12 teachers. This is something I transcribed several months ago from the American Federation of Teachers’ excellent quarterly American Educator so that I could place it in my planning book.

If you find typos, lapses in style or syntax, or any other errors in the prose, please advise. Since this is someone else’s work, I don’t seek peer review on it.

Graces

“Graces: In Roman mythology, the Gratiae, goddesses who embodied beauty and charm. Called by the Greeks the Charites, they were, by some accounts, named Aglaia (Brilliance), Thalia (the Flowering), and Euphrosyne (Joy), though their names and even their number varied. Although they were probably very early spirits of vegetation, they did not in classical times have any cult of importance. They are best known from their many appearances in art.”

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

Write It Right: Involve for Entail

“Involve for Entail. ‘Proof of the charges will involve his dismissal.’ Not at all; it will entail it. To involve is, literally, to infold, not to bring about, nor cause to ensue. An unofficial investigation, for example, may involve character and reputation, but the ultimate consequence is entailed. A question, in the parliamentary sense, may involve a principal; its settlement one way or another may entail expense, or injury to interests. An act may involve one’s honor and entail disgrace.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

Modernism

“Modernism: The philosophy of modern art. Nineteenth-century industrialization resulted in societal changes which radically altered institutions of patronage for artists. With the rise of museums and an expanding commercial art market, artists were freer to experiment with modes of expression. Art for Art’s Sake was the common credo as this avant-garde determined their own content, form, and medium. Movements and styles abounded, including: Cubism, Constructivism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Minimalism. Modernist art criticism was centered on significant form. Painting (especially Abstract Expressionism) was thought to progress toward purity in its refinement of color and flatness. The deconstructive critique of such formalist emphasis exposed the ‘impurity’ of meaning, that is, the possibility of multiple interpretations and a relativization of value judgements. This decentering expanded the theoretical and artistic modes of basic importance to Postmodernism. See International Style.”

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