Category Archives: The Weekly Text

This week’s Text is this lesson plan on the Greek word roots -cracy and -crat, which mean government, rule, and power. I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the verb administer, which I hope, perhaps naively or erroneously, points the way toward the meaning of these two very productive roots. We get aristocracy, democrat, meritocracy, and bureaucracy from these roots; all are included on this scaffolded worksheet, which is the gravamen of the 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.

This week’s Text, for the final Friday of the first month of 2025, is this lesson plan on the Latin word roots carn and carni. They mean, which you know if you’ve ever enjoyed a non-vegetarian bowl of chili con carne, “flesh” and “meat.” This is a vigorous root in English, growing such words (all included on the worksheet below) as carnage, incarnate, reincarnation, and carnivore.

This lesson opens, should you be inclined to use it, with this context clues worksheet on the noun game. In this context, the word doesn’t define things you play at, but rather wild animals served as a meal–that is, game birds like pheasants, large mammals like deer (i.e. venison) and the like. This, I hope, points the way toward the meaning of these word roots.

Finally, this scaffolded worksheet is the principal work of this lesson. It includes all of the words listed above, as well as cognates from the Romance languages.

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.