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.

Term of Art: Maxim

“Maxim (noun): A summary universal truth, fundamental principle, or rule of conduct; proverbial or sententious saying.

‘I guess I was seven when I first heard the maxim that only people with a small vocabulary use “dirty” words. I am forty-seven and have just received a communication from a reader delivering this maxim as though he invented it. William F. Buckley, Jr., Execution Eve'”

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

Rotten Reviews: Henderson the Rain King

“The novelist who doesn’t like meanings writes an allegory; the allegory means that men should not mean but be. Ods bodkins. The reviewer looks at the evidence and wonders if he should damn the author and praise the book, or praise the author and damn the book. And is it possible, somehow or other to praise or damn, both? He isn’t sure.”

Reed Whittemore, New Republic

“At times Henderson is too greyly overcast with thought to be more than a dun Quixote.”

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

H. Lynn Erickson on the Public in Public Education

“The public needs to be informed that the 21st-century requires a higher standard for curriculum and instruction. This standard includes the development of critical and creative thinking; the ability to put knowledge to use in complex living, learning, and working performances; and an instructional program that gives teachers flexibility in engaging students with process and skill development.

The United States has a responsibility to educate its citizens and future citizens to the new standards and requirements. The equitable distribution of computers and technology into all schools should be a national concern and priority. School districts can systematically design curricula to integrate and focus on needed knowledge, processes, skills, and attitudes, but teachers have a right to expect the time and training to design curricula; learn new teaching methods and technologies; and collaborate in school, business, and home partnerships.”

Excerpted from: Erickson, H. Lynn. Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction: Teaching Beyond the Facts. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, 2002.

Book of Answers: One Hundred and One Dalmatians

“Who wrote One Hundred and One Dalmatians? The source of the popular Disney film was Dodie Smith’s 1956 novel.”

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

The Devil’s Dictionary: Wheat

“Wheat, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread. The French are said to eat more bread per capita than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.”

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: Active Reading

“A set of pedagogical strategies intended to get students involved in thinking about what they are reading. Active reading may involve any of a wide range of activities, such as underlining, outlining, predicting, summarizing, paraphrasing, connecting the reading to one’s own experiences, visualizing, or asking questions about the content of the reading material.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

James Thurber’s Thoughts on the Final Day of the Work Week

“I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.”

James Thurber

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

Rotten Reviews: Walt Whitman

“Mr. Whitman’s attitude seems monstrous. It is monstrous because it pretends to persuade the soul while it slights the intellect; because it pretends to gratify the feelings while it outrages the taste…Our hearts are often touched through a compromise with the artistic sense but never in direct violation of it.”

Henry James, The Nation

“Incapable of true poetical originality, Whitman had the cleverness to invent a literary trick, and the shrewdness to stick to it.”

Peter Bayne, Contemporary Review, 1875

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

Brewer’s Curious Titles: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“A novel (1962) by Ken Kesey (1935-2001). The narrator is the Chief, a Native American whose father was the last chief of his tribe. he is a patient in a mental hospital, in which is represented by ‘Big Nurse.’ The admission of McMurphy from prison precipitates a struggle between ‘good’ (the patients,) and ‘evil’ (Big Nurse), with the ‘liberation’ of the patients from institutional restrictions as the stake. The film version (1975), directed by Milos Forman and starring Jack Nicholson as McMurphy, was an unexpected commercial success.

The term ‘cuckoo’ for an eccentric, fool or madman dates back to the late 16th century, deriving from the expression “a cuckoo in the nest,” denoting an oddity. ‘Cuckoo’s nest’ (along with ‘cuckoo academy’ and ‘cuckoo farm’) arose as a term for a psychiatric institution in the USA in the 1960s; cuckoos notably don’t make their own nests, but lay their eggs in those of other birds. The ‘one flew over’ in the title refers to the final escape of the Chief.”

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

Socioeconomic Status and Reading

“Students from disadvantaged backgrounds show a characteristic pattern of reading achievement in school: they make good progress until around fourth grade, and then suddenly fall behind. The importance of background knowledge to comprehension gives us insight into this phenomenon. Reading instruction in the early grades concerns decoding, and so reading tests are basically tests of decoding ability. Kids from wealthier homes in fact do a bit better on these tests, but poorer children are still doing okay. But around fourth grade most children can decode fairly well, and so reading tests place greater weight on comprehension. The disadvantaged kids have not had the same opportunities to acquire the vocabulary and background knowledge needed to succeed on these tests and so their performance drops significantly.”

Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel T. The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.