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.

Jacob Bronowski on the Essence of Science

Posted on April 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

“That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man (1973)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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The Alexandrian Library

Posted on April 27, 2018 | Leave a comment

“The most famous library of antiquity. Located in Alexandria, it was the principal center of Hellenistic culture under the Ptolemies, and contained hundreds of thousands of rolls. Among its earliest librarians were Callimachus and Apollonius of Rhodes. G[eorge] B[ernard] Shaw treats humorously the burning of the library by Julius Caesar. It was burned and partly consumed in 391; in 642, according to a dubious legend, the caliph Omar seized the city and used the library’s books ‘to heat the baths of the city for six months.’ It is said that it contained 700,000 volumes, and the reason given by the Muslim destroyer for the destruction of the library was that the books were unnecessary in any case for all the knowledge that was necessary to man was contained in the Koran and that knowledge that was contained in the library that was not contained in the Koran must be pernicious. Most modern experts, however, agree that the story of the library’s destruction by Omar is probably apocryphal.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Independent Practice, Reference, Social Sciences

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The Weekly Text, April 27, 2018: A Lesson Plan on Using the Personal Pronoun in the Possessive Case

Posted on April 27, 2018 | Leave a comment

It’s Friday again, so it’s time for another Weekly Text.  This week I offer a complete lesson plan on using the personal pronoun in the possessive case. I begin this lesson with this short exercise on the homophones to, too, and two; in the event the lesson runs into a second day, I keep this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the rhetorical question in reserve. The mainstay of this lesson is this structured, scaffolded worksheet on using the personal pronoun in the possessive case. Here, also, is the teacher’s copy of the worksheet to help you get through the lesson. Finally, here is a learning support on pronouns and case that both your and your students might find useful for this lesson–and elsewhere.

That’s it. It finally feels like spring here, so it’s one of the best times of year her in the Big Apple. On second thought, though, aren’t all the seasons marvelous here?

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.

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Term of Art: Morpheme

Posted on April 26, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Any of the smallest units of meaning or form within a language, or a verbal element that cannot be further reduced and still retain meaning, e.g. the word ‘woman,’ the prefix ‘un-,’ and the inflection ‘-ize.’ Adjective: morphemic; adverb: morphemically.”

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

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Rotten Rejections: Jacqueline Susann and Valley of the Dolls

Posted on April 25, 2018 | Leave a comment

“She is painfully dull, inept, clumsy, undisciplined, rambling and thoroughly amateurish writer whose every sentence, paragraph and scene calls for the hand of a pro. She wastes endless pages on utter trivia, writes wide-eyed romantic scenes that would not make the back pages of True Confessions, hauls out every terrible show biz cliché in all the books, lets every good scene fall apart in endless talk and allows her book to ramble aimlessly…most of the first 200 pages are virtually worthless and dreadfully dull and practically every scene is dragged out and stomped on by her endless talk….”

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

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Archetype

Posted on April 24, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Generally, a prototype or original pattern or a paradigm or abstract idea of a class of things that represents the typical and essential elements shared by all varieties of that class. In literature, myth, folklore, and religion, the term can be applied to images, themes, symbols, ideas, characters, and situations that appeal to our unconscious racial memory. T.S. Eliot explains this as civilized man’s “pre-logical mentality.” The archetype, or primordial image, touches this “pre-logical mentality.” The psychology of Carl Jung and the comparative anthropology of J.G. Frazer have given the study of archetypal patterns greater usefulness in literary criticism.

Archetypes can be primitive and universal, and consist of general themes like birth, death, coming of age, love, guild, redemption, conflict between free will and destiny, rivalry between members of the family, fertility rites; of characters like the hero rebel, the wanderer, the devil, the buffoon; and of characters like the lion, serpent, or eagle.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Platitude

Posted on April 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Platitude, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-morality. The Pope’s-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.

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Aphorism

Posted on April 20, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A compact statement, such as a maxim or proverb, that concisely expresses a principle or common experience. The term was first used by Hippocrates. The beginning sentence of his Aphorisms is a well-known example: ‘Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult.”

Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Oscar Wilde on Skepticism

Posted on April 19, 2018 | Leave a comment

“To believe is very dull. To doubt intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.”

Oscar Wilde

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Goethe on Identifying Talent and Teaching to It

Posted on April 18, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Aptitudes are assumed, they should become accomplishments. That is the purpose of all education.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities (1809)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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