“Many people [in the city] buy a house just to get the trees which are thrown in with the deal. I’ve got three and a large part of the overhang from a tree next door. This trespasser, from a strictly material standpoint, is a finer three than any which I possess, but I prefer my own horse chestnut just the same. It’s a one-man tree and would never think of dividing its loyalty between two houses.”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in New York City, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
While it is far from a light topic of discussion, I nonetheless suspect that more than one teacher or guidance counselor will find a use for this reading on anorexia and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it.
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.
“(1927-1989) American novelist and essayist. Abbey is best known for his celebration of southwest Utah’s slickrock country. One of the more overtly political modern American nature writers, he advocated for the preservation of the wilderness and was a tireless critic of the forces which, in his view, desecrated it. In Desert Solitaire (1968), a nonfiction account of summers spent as a ranger in Arches National Monument, Abbey portrays a starkly beautiful desert landscape that is threatened by so-called “industrial tourism.” The Monkey-Wrench Gang (1975), a novel about a merry band of eco-terrorists, was taken up by the environmental group Earth First!. Novels like The Brave Cowboy (1956) and Fire on the Mountain (1962), further explore the fate of strong-willed individuals confronting the technocratic forces of industry and government.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the expression and concept of esprit de corps. This, I think, is something students should know before they graduate high school.
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.
“The mathematical sages of India conceived of this concept, and started on the path of the creation of zero back in the ninth century BC. The root of the word is in the Sanskrit Shoonya, meaning ‘it is a void’, which got passed on to the Arabs, who knew the symbol as ‘Safira.’
The Western world came to the concept extraordinarily late, when Venetian merchants stumbled across it and brought it back to their homeland, where it was known as ‘zefiro‘–later corrupted to ‘zero.’ The concept gradually spread through Europe, reading such far-flung outposts as the British Isles in the late sixteenth century.”
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.
Here, on this cool late spring morning, is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Tragedy in the Bathroom.”
I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the American idiom “Play Possum.” For the lesson itself, you’ll need this PDF scan of the illustration and questions from Crime and Puzzlement Volume 1. Finally, here is the answer key to “Tragedy in the Bathroom,” which I’ve rendered in typescript in the event that you need to adjust it for English language learners or struggling readers.
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.
“Literally, Bible of the poor. Book, either manuscript or printed, of the late Middle Ages containing juxtaposed scenes from the Old and New Testaments.”
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
Here’s something I just cannot let pass.
Last year about this time, I published this blog post on the pedagogical fad of the “flipped classroom.” I criticized the method on a number of grounds, which made me no friends among my colleagues pushing this bad idea.
So, I am not at all surprised to find in Google headlines this morning this report on the homework gap and its relation to students’ struggle in school. The culprit? Why it is none other than the absence of a reliable internet connection. My reaction? Roll “Theme from ‘The Vindicators'” by The Fleshtones.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged cognition/learning/understanding, music, professional development
“Instruction in the descriptive terminology and and prescriptive rules of a given language, including syntax and the function of different parts of speech.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage, professional development, term of art
“(Russian title; Arkhipelag Gulag) A three-volume history (1973-6; English translation 1974-78) by the Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) of the Gulag, the Soviet administrative department responsible for maintaining prisons and forced labour camps. ‘Gulag’ is the abbreviation of Russian Glavnoye upravleniye ispravitel no-trudovykh lagerey, “Chief Administration for Corrective Labour Camps.’ Such camps–scattered across Siberia like an archipelago of islands–were a notorious feature of the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1955 and resulted in the deaths of millions. Having been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1970), Solzhenitsyn was in 1974 deported after the publication in Paris of the first two volumes and the suicide of his former assistant wh, after five days of interrogation by the KGB, had revealed where she had hidden a copy of the complete work.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
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