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.

Kieran Egan on Narrative as Compelling Pedagogy

“A model for teaching that draws on the power of the story, then, will ensure that we set up a conflict or sense of dramatic tension at the beginning of our lessons and unit. Thus, we create some expectation that we will satisfy at the end. It is this rhythm of expectation and satisfaction that will give us a principle for precisely selecting content…. We need, then, to be more conscious of the importance of beginning with a conflict or problem whose resolution at the end can set such a rhythm in motion.”

Kieran Egan

Teaching as Story-Telling: An Alternative Approach to Teaching and Curriculum in the Elementary School

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

The Devil’s Dictionary: Functionary

“Functionary, n. A person entrusted with certain official duties. That great and good man, the late President Buchanan, once unluckily mentioned himself with commendable satisfaction as ‘an old public functionary.’ The description fitted him like a skin and he wore it to his grave. When he appeared as the Judgement Seat, and his case was called, the Recording Angel ran his finger down the index to the Book of Doom and read off the name: ‘James Buchanan, O.P.F.’ ‘What does that mean?’ inquired the Court. And with that readiness of resource which in life had distinguished it from a garden slug, that truthful immortal part replied: ‘Oncommonly phaultless filanthropist.’ Mr. Buchanan was admitted to a seat in the Upper House.”

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: Apposition

“Apposition: Two consecutive, juxtaposed nouns or noun phrases are in apposition when they refer to the same person or thing, and when either can be omitted without seriously changing the meaning or the grammar of a sentence. Mrs. Thatcher and the British Prime Minister are in apposition in Mrs. Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, became leader of the Tory party in 1975. Here, both Mrs. Thatcher became leader…and The British Prime Minister became leader…could serve equally well alone. The term is often used when these criteria only partly apply, some grammarians using terms like partial or weak apposition to distinguish various types of lesser acceptability: ‘The heir to the throne arrived, Prince Charles’ (where only the second noun phrase can be omitted).

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Rotten Reviews: Raymond Carver

“There is nothing here to appease a reader’s basic literary needs.”

Atlantic Monthly

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

Write it Right: Allude to for Mention

“Allude to for Mention. What is alluded to is not mentioned, but referred to indirectly. Originally, the word implied a playful, or sportive reference. That meaning is gone out of it.”

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

Brewer’s Curious Titles: Down and Out in Paris and London

“Down and Out in Paris and London: An autobiographical study (1933) by George Orwell (1903-50), the author’s first published book. It is an account of working with the poor in London’s East End, and performing menial jobs in a working-class district of Paris, while trying to get his writing published. A useful piece of advice in the book is to stick to the cheaper restaurants in Paris, as in the more glamorous establishments the waiters are likely to spit in the soup.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

Mark Twain on the Sacred and the Profane

“Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”

Mark Twain

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

Term of Art: Psychosocial Stressor

“psychosocial stressor: n. Any life event or change, such as divorce, marriage, bereavement, loss or change of a job, or moving house, that causes stress and may be associated with the onset or deterioration of a mental disorder. See also adjustment disorder.”

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

7 Chemicals of Alchemist’s Arcana

“Sulphuric Acid * Iron Oxide * Sodium Carbonate * Sodium Nitrate * Liquor Hepatis * Red Pulvis Solaris * Black Pulvis Solaris

The alchemist’s vocabulary does not always translate directly into a modern formula. They were keen on Natron, which was a generic word that included both the salts of sodium carbonate and sodium nitrate. Vitriol, however, is what we know as sulphuric acid and Aqua Fortis was nitric acid. Black pulvis solaris was formed from ground black antimony (stibnite–a sulphide of antimony) mixed with ground sulphur. Red pulvis solaris was a mixture of mercury (which could be extracted by heating cinnabar) and sulphur.

The alchemists also made a strong connection between the seven prime metals and the planets. The sun was linked to gold, the moon to silver, Mars to iron, Mercury to quicksilver, Saturn to lead, Jupiter to tin, and Venus to copper.”

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.

Malediction

“Malediction (noun): An invoking of evil or harm upon somebody or something; pronounced curse; evil talk or slander. Adjective: maledictive, maledictory.

‘He caught up the empty pewter mug at his right and threw it at the clumsy lad with a malediction.'”

Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.