OK, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “strike while iron is hot.” Since blacksmiths aren’t really front-and-center participants in our modern industrial economy, this idiom may well be on its way to extinction. Nonetheless, I still hear it invoked from time to time.
If you find typos in this document, 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.
“Dewey’s genius grasped the educational principles underlying such sequences. Coming to understand an established idea in school must be made more like discovering a new idea than like hearing adult knowledge explained point by point. We learn complex and abstract ideas through a zigzag sequence of trial, error, reflection, and adjustment. As the facets tell us, the student needs to interpret, apply, see from different points of view, and so forth, all of which imply different sequences than those found in a catalog of existing knowledge. We cannot fully understand an idea until we retrace, relive, or recapitulate some of its history—how it came to be understood in the first place. The young learner should be treated as a discoverer, even if the path seemed inefficient. That’s why Piaget argued ‘to understand is to invent.’”
Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.
If there is a better time to post this reading on antibodies and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet, I can’t imagine when it would be.
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.
[As school closures, and therefore homebound children, mount during this COVID19 crisis, I cannot think of a better time to post this squib on the way I was educated in high school and college, and a particularly sound method of education for children in our current circumstances.]
“project-based learning: A teaching technique in which students learn by doing, engaging in activities that lead to the creation of products based on their own experiences. The project method was first described in 1918 by William Heard Kilpatrick of Teachers College, Columbia University, who hoped to replace subject-matter teaching with real-life projects chosen by students.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
Here is a complete lesson plan on the Greek word root biblio-, which means, simply, book. This is a very productive root in English (think Bible, among other words). If you are an English or Social Studies teacher, chances are you’ve asked your students to produce a (maybe even an annotated one) bibliography–i.e. some writing, in list form, about books
I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun novel as a way of hinting to students where this lesson is going. Finally, here is the worksheet that is the basis of the learning for this lesson.
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.
“Salon Des Refuses: The exhibition promoted by Napoleon III in 1863 to show works rejected by the Paris Salon. Because it undermined the prestige of the academic art sanctioned at the official salon, it is often cited as signaling the birth of the avant-garde and modern art. It showed works by Edouard Manet, Eugene Boudin, Ignace Henri Fantin-Latour, Camille Pissarro, James McNeill Whistler, and others.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Moving right along this morning, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Of Ghouls and Goblins.”
I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of the role model. Finally, to execute this lesson, you’ll need the PDF of the illustration and questions and the typescript of the answer key.
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.
“The Invisible Man: The title of two very different novels. The first is a work of science fiction by H.G. Wells (1866-1946), published in 1897. In this story a scientist finds the secret of invisibility, which lures him into temptation. The first film version(1933), starring Claude Rains, was highly regarded, but its several sequels less so.
The second novel with this title was by the black US writer Ralph Ellison (1914-94). Published in 1952, it won the 1953 National Book Award for fiction. The novel tells the story of a Southern black who moves to New York, participates in the struggle against white oppression, and ends up ignored and living in a coal hole.
I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
The Invisible Man, prologue.
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“Abroad, adj. At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable; to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Sword of Damocles. This expression, which comments on the ever-present danger to those in power from their courtiers. You’ll hear this turn up occasionally as an idiom in educated discourse.
If you find typos in this document, 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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