“Colloquialism: A word or expression appropriate to informal conversation but not usually suitable for academic or business writing. They wanted to get even (instead of they wanted to retaliate).”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“child study movement: A movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that advocated the study of children’s interests, emotions, needs, and physical development as the basis for determining their educational program. The child study movement was launched by psychologist G. Stanley Hall, who was the first president of the American Psychological Association and of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. The movement enjoyed great popularity among teachers and parents in the early 20th century and brought increased attention to the needs of children. However, it eventually lost its luster because of the poor quality of the research on which it was based: much of the research consisted of interviews with children conducted by enthusiastic amateurs.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged philosophy/religion, professional development, term of art
“Deconstruction: In architecture deconstruction is a more disruptive element within a postmodern zeitgeist. Architectural postmodernism often enacts a nostalgic reinvestment of meaning through the inclusion of historicizing references such as classical columns and ornamentation. Deconstructive architecture, on the other hand, seeks a deregulation of architectural meaning and function. Bernard Tschumi’s structures at the Parc de la Villette in Paris do away with the great synthesis of modern architecture: form follows function. Their playful uselessness is a travesty of the functionalist paradigm. See SEMIOTICS.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Broca’s area: A part of the brain included in a massive area of damage suffered by an aphasic patient of P. Broca in the mid-19th century. ‘Broca’s aphasia’ is a form characterized by agrammatism and associated in clinical lore with lesions in this area.”
Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
“Clause: A group of related words that contains a subject and predicate. Moths swarm around a burning candle. While she was taking the test, Karen muttered to herself.”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.”
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, united states history
[This sentence from a publisher dismisses one of Joseph Hansen’s Dave Brandstetter books, which is a series of hard-boiled detective novels that feature a gay protagonist, i.e. Dave Brandstetter. I am an inveterate reader of mysteries, but have only read one Mr. Hansen’s books; it was quite good.]
“This was put together with chewing gum and a paper clip.”
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test: The most widely used intelligence test for measuring the mental skills of children. Binet was the principal author of the original test, designed to identify those French schoolchildren who were in need of special education, in the early twentieth century. He compared the performance of each child with what was average or normal for his or her age. Researchers at Stanford University in the United States later adapted the test, linking it to the concept of an intelligence quotient (IQ), and standardizing test scores round an average IQ of 100. These scores express the alleged intelligence of each child relative to his or her peers in the population. Because they are standardized, it is possible to compare the performance of children in different age-bands, or the same child across time. The items in the test have been subject to periodic revision to allow for socio-economic and cultural change.
A number of other similar intelligence tests are also now in use. However, all such instruments have been subject to criticisms of cultural, class, racial, or sexual bias, and the whole area of intelligence testing remains highly controversial, in both academic and political circles.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the simple future tense of verbs. I open this lesson with this worksheet on differentiating the homophones veracious and voracious, which are both adjectives. It always pays to prepare for a lesson to spill over into a second day. So here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of nuance, which is really something students ought to know before they graduate high school.
You’ll need the scaffolded worksheet that is the mainstay of this lesson to do its work. You might also find this learning support and word bank useful in presenting this lesson and completing its work. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the 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.
“Who was Simon Legree and where did he come from? The archetypal villain first appears in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) as the brutal degenerate who flogs Tom to death.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
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