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.

George Santayana on the Joy of Criticism

Posted on May 1, 2017 | Leave a comment

“To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.”

George Santaytana

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

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Rotten Reviews: Madame Bovary

Posted on April 26, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Monsieur Flaubert is not an author.”

Le Figaro

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

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Mortimer Adler on the Backbone of Democracy

Posted on April 24, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Not until this century have we undertaken to give twelve years of schooling to all our children…. Suffrage without schooling produces mobocracy, not democracy—not rule of law, not constitutional government by people as well as for them.”

Mortimer J. Adler, The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (1982)

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

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Rotten Reviews: Little Big Man

Posted on April 18, 2017 | Leave a comment

“…a farce that is continually over-reaching itself. Or, as the Cheyenne might put it, Little Big Man Little Overblown.”

Gerald Walker, New York Times Book Review

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

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The Perils of Adolescence

Posted on April 17, 2017 | Leave a comment

“The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.”

Quentin Crisp

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

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Rotten Reviews: Saul Bellow’s “Herzog”

Posted on April 7, 2017 | Leave a comment

“There is no effort toward decency–many of the conversations that come back to Herzog are foul-mouthed, and his own sexual actions and reminiscences are unrestrained.”

America

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

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Sir Richard Steele on Reading as Regimen

Posted on April 7, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body.”

Sir Richard Steele (1675-1729)

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

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The Weekly Text, April 7, 2017: A Lesson Plan on Descriptive and Limiting Adjectives

Posted on April 7, 2017 | Leave a comment

After posting nine weeks of readings for Black History Month and Women’s History Month, I’m pleased to offer, as this week’s Text, a complete lesson plan on descriptive and limiting adjectives. As with most of the lessons I write, there are two short do-now exercises to begin this lesson: the first is a parsing sentences worksheet for verbs and the second is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on idiom. The mainstay of this lesson is a scaffolded worksheet on descriptive and limiting adjectives. If your students are anything like those I serve, then you will very likely find useful this learning support which you might want to edit or otherwise rearrange. Finally, to help you guide your students through this lesson, 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.

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Kudos to the Student Journalists at Pittsburg High School!

Posted on April 6, 2017 | Leave a comment

When high school students, working at their school’s paper, do a better job of scrutinizing an administrator’s credentials than the people charged with hiring him or her, then you know there is a teacher doing something right.

Which is why this article about a group of student journalists in Pittsburg, Kansas, who did exactly that, is cool as hell.

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Rotten Reviews: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Posted on April 5, 2017 | Leave a comment

“A gross trifling with every fine feeling…. Mr. Clemens has no reliable sense of propriety.”

Springfield Republican

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

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