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.

A Lesson Plan on Data Storage from The Order of Things

As you get older, you take it for granted, but it’s still fun to experience synchrony. A friend of mine and I land on synchrony quite often while texting–often using the same words simultaneously. In this case, the same day I interviewed with some very nice, clearly talented, unusually engaged and deeply committed folks at a computer-themed career and technical education high school in the North Bronx, I pulled out this lesson plan on data storage, adapted from text I grabbed from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s The Order of Things. I expect this would work well at a school such as theirs. I hope they find their way to it.

For your students, here is the list as reading and comprehension questions, which is the work of this lesson.

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.

Term of Art: Ability Test

“Ability test: A test that measures a person’s current level of performance or that estimates future performance. The term sometimes denotes an achievement test, sometimes and aptitude test, and sometimes and intelligence test.”

Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

E.O. Wilson on the Importance of Insects and the Relative Unimportance of Humankind

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed then thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”

Edward O. Wilson

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

Write It Right: Avoid for Avert

“Avoid for Avert. ‘By displaying a light the skipper avoided a collision.’ To avoid is to shun; the skipper could have avoided a collision only by getting out of the way.”

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

Book of Answers: Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prizes

“How many Pulitzer Prizes did Eugene O’Neill win? Four, for Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928), and Long Day’s Journey into Night (1957).”

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

Common Errors in English Usage: Religiosity (n), Piety (n)

While I’m not sure I could argue that either of these words are vital to the high school student, that’s not necessarily the point of the English Usage worksheet on differentiating between the use of religiosity and piety when discussing the concepts the two nouns represent. This document, rather, seeks to help students make usage decisions based on the subtle differences between two words like these.

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.

Term of Art: Relative Pronoun

“Relative Pronoun:  A pronoun that connects a dependent clause to a main clause in a sentence: who, whom, whose, which, that, whoever, whomever, whichever and whatever.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

Structuralism

“Structuralism: Seen as a form of constructivism, it is manifest as low-relief sculpture that interprets nature in the tradition of Cezanne by the application of simple geometric forms to a flat surface. Named by American artist Charles Biederman, it has a strong following in Holland and Canada.”

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

Term of Art: Balance of Terror

“Balance of terror: Mutual fear of commencing a nuclear war, a concept which postulates that no country will use nuclear weapons because of the fear of retaliation by the other side. Such a balance has been held because nuclear war, believed to be mutually destructive, would be non-productive to the aggressor. However, the concept is now questioned by proponents of a ‘limited’ nuclear war who believed that the use of nuclear weapons can be closely controlled and restricted to certain areas without provoking massive retaliation.”

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

Term of Art: Relative Clause

“Relative Clause: A clause introduced by a relative pronoun, such as who, which, that, or by a relative adverb, such as where, when, why.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.