“It seems to be the great gift of Mr. Wolfe that everything is interesting, valuable, and significant to him. It must be confessed that he has just missed the greatest of gifts, that of being able to convey his interest to the ordinary reader.”
Basil Davenport, Saturday Review of Literature
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
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“Voluntarism: A term usually contrasted with determinism, voluntarism denotes the assumption that individuals are the agents of their actions, and have some control over what they do. Voluntarism’s alliance with action contrasts with the deterministic emphasis associated with structure. By accepting human unpredictability, voluntarism renders sociological analysis more difficult, though arguable more interesting. Voluntaristic theories place issues of decision, purpose, and choice at the forefront of sociological analysis. In The Structure of Social Action (1937), Talcott Parsons develops a voluntaristic theory of action, so called because it includes normative elements, subjective categories, choices about means and ends, and effort.
Voluntarism in social science raises the philosophical issue of free will: namely, the belief that choice means freedom, in the sense of individuals being free to will what they will. Most sociologists—even those of a voluntaristic persuasion—recognize that individuals can only do otherwise than they do within limits (perhaps of a cultural or psychological kind). That is, a residual determinism is implied, even though social action is typically not reduced to physical and biological variables.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
“History Painting: Painting with themes from or allusions to important historical events, classical literature, and the Bible. From the Renaissance to the 19th century, it was regarded in academies as the highest, most worthwhile kind of painting. Only toward the end of the 18th century did themes from contemporary history become acceptable. Compare NARRATIVE ART.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Here is a lesson plan on the division of labor within academic historical disciplines. I start this lesson off with this context clues worksheet on the adjective scarce. If the lesson goes into a second day on account of classroom conditions, I keep this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of class struggle nearby. As I think about it, I think I made a point of either teaching this with the lesson, or perhaps assigning it as independent practice (i.e. homework). This scaffolded worksheet is at the center of the unit; here is the teacher’s copy of it to get you through the lesson with something resembling ease.
Incidentally, I wrote this lesson because there were, for the several years I taught the subject in New York City, a couple of questions at the beginning of the New York State Global Studies and Geography Regents Examinations on who might perform a specific task in a historical inquiry. I took this a step further because I wanted to build a literacy lesson as well as give students a preview of potential college areas of study and majors.
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.
“Declarative: Constituting a statement or assertion that may be either true or false, e.g., ‘Language must continually change.’”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Kismet: A musical play (1953) based on a play (1911) by Edward Knoblock about a poet turned beggar who has a series of adventures reminiscent of The Arabian Knights. The music of Alexander Borodin was arranged by Robert Wright and George Forrest. The title comes from the Turkish qismet (‘portion’ or ‘lot’) and is now commonly understood to mean ‘fate.’ Kismet is sometimes advanced as a more becoming alternative to ‘Kiss me” in Horatio Nelson’s putative last words, ‘Kiss me, Hardy.’”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, fiction/literature, music, readings/research
“auditory perception: The ability to process and make sense of information that is received as sound. Involving recognition and interpretation, rather than hearing itself, auditory perception is related to the ways in which the brain recognizes and discriminates sounds in order to make sense of them.
Problems with auditory perception are frequently associated with language disorders and may have significant effect on an individual’s language development in areas such as reading, expressive language, and receptive vocabulary. These problems are a major factor in language learning disabilities.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“Saruman the White * Gandalf the Grey * Radagast the Brown * Alatar also named Morinehtar * Pallando also named Romestamo
The Five are known as Wizards by men, and as the Istari by Elves, and their role is to assist Middle-Earth. Saruman is the man of skills; Gandalf is the elf of the staff; the dreamer; Radagast is the friend of birds and tender of beasts; Alatar (also named Morinehtar) and Pallando (Romestamo) are the sky-blue wizards who journey into the east and out of the story.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Here is a lesson plan on using linking verbs, which is the first part of two lessons on using these kinds of verbs with predicate adjectives. This is a very common syntactical structure in English, so I have a number of lessons, using a number of strategies and parts of speech, that aim to help students develop their own mastery over this kind of sentence.
I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on intransitive verbs; in the event that the lesson goes into a second day, I keep this homophones worksheet on the adjectives hardy and hearty nearby. This learning support is a word bank of predicate adjectives to use with this scaffolded worksheet that is the center of the lesson. 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.
“Donald Woods Winnicott: (1896-1971) A British pediatrician and psychoanalyst whose work on the mother-baby relationship directed attention to the infant’s environment and ‘good-enough mothering.’ Often discussed by modern feminist writers on parenting, his most accessible book is The Child, The Family, and the Outside World (1964).”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
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