Rotten Reviews: The Female Eunuch

Posted on April 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Bores aid no revolution.”

Library Journal

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

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Cultural Literacy: Imperative

Posted on April 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the imperative form of verbs. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one compound sentence separated by a colon–which makes it easier to read–and three comprehension questions.

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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The Doubter’s Companion: Barons: Robber, Press, Etc.

Posted on April 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Barons: Robber, Press, Etc.: Individuals operating in spite of—or perhaps thanks to—a severe inferiority complex transformed into megalomania.

As Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller demonstrated, the robber variety can find some inner peace through the semi-physical therapy of having people make and do things. A select few may even come to resemble the sort of medieval barons who bullied King John into signing the Magna Carta. The press sector offers less scope for improvement. Devoid of practical therapeutic tools, it leaves the mentally unstable to pontificate publicly while using their power to bully others into silence. So long as the widespread ownership of newspapers prevents them from limiting the public’s general freedom of speech, these unhappy individuals provide others with the welcome distraction of colorful comic relief.”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

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The Weekly Text, 11 April 2025: A Lesson Plan on Poker from The Order of Things

Posted on April 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is the last, for now, of 50 lessons that I adapted during the pandemic from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s comprehensive reference book The Order of Things.

So here is a lesson plan on poker, which, as I have reminded users of this blog when I posted each of these 50 lessons, is written for striving readers and/or students who struggle with interpreting and in general dealing with two symbolic systems–in this case numbers and letters–at the same time. This list as reading and comprehension questions serves as the worksheet for this lesson. It includes a relatively complicated list of denominations of poker chips and a hierarchy of winning hands from highest to lowest. As I write this, having never used this lesson, I find myself wondering if a few hands of poker would serve as a satisfying and edifying form of application for this exercise.

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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Write It Right: Democracy for Democratic Party

Posted on April 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Democracy for Democratic Party. One could as properly call the Christian Church ‘the Christianity.’”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

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Common English Verbs Followed by an Object and an Infinitive: Force

Posted on April 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the verb force when used with an object and an infinitive.

The fire drill forced the students to exit their classroom.

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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Term of Art: Stretch It Out

Posted on April 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

“stretch it out: A replacement for the customary expression ‘sound it out,’ referring to a technique for analyzing an unfamiliar word. When a student who has had little exposure to phonetic methods of analyzing letters and words confronts a new word, the literacy coach may tell the student to ‘stretch it out like a rubber band’ in hopes of finding the meaning of the word or perhaps similar associations.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Cultural Literacy: If the Shoe Fits, Wear It

Posted on April 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “If the shoe fits, wear it.” This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension question. A solid explanation of this once-common idiom (if not still?) in English.

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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Corruption

Posted on April 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Corruption (noun): Change of an unfamiliar term or form to one more familiar, or departure form correct of standard word use; debased or unorthodox word form; perverted wording of a text or document. Adjective: corrupt; verb. Also BASTARDIZATION

‘His voice was polite again; he even chuckled. ‘After the first shock of seeing the Scrolls destroyed, we realized you’d actually given us a unique opportunity. All the texts are corrupt, you know, even these—copies of copies of copies, full of errata and lacunae—but we never could agree on a common reading, and of course the old Scrolls acquired a great spurious authority for sentimental reasons, even thought the contradict each other and themselves.’ John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy”

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

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The Weekly Text, 4 April 2025: A Lesson Plan on the Greek Word Roots -Cracy and -Crat

Posted on April 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

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.

 

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