Laurence Peter on Bureaucracy

Posted on January 24, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.”

Laurence J. Peter

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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

Posted on January 24, 2025 | Leave a comment

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

The student expected the professor to teach a cogent lesson on contract law.

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: Strategy

Posted on January 24, 2025 | Leave a comment

“strategy: A plan or tactic to solve a problem or carry out a decision. In education, a strategy refers to almost anything that a teacher or a student does in the classroom—asking a question, reading a story, figuring the meaning of a word, planning the next day’s lesson, and so on.”

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

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Cultural Literacy: Huguenots

Posted on January 24, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Huguenots. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and three comprehension question.

And unless I miss my guess, most secondary educational institutions don’t take a deep enough dive into European history to spend too much time on the travails of French Protestants. I became interested in them when I learned that New Rochelle, New York, through which I  have traveled frequently by train, was founded by Huguenots. Not only that, but as I researched this post, I discovered that New Paltz, New York (which I have never visited but heard good things about), was also founded by Huguenots.

So I wrote this, I suppose, mostly useless worksheet.

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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Carl (Clinton) and Mark Van Doren

Posted on January 24, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Carl (Clinton) and Mark Van Doren: (1885-1950, 1894-1972) U.S. writers and teachers. The Van Doren brothers were born in Hope, Illinois. Carl, who taught at Columbia University 1911-1930), edited the Cambridge History of American Literature (1917-21) and journals. His critical works include the biography Benjamin Franklin (1938, Pulitzer Prize). Mark taught at Columbia 1920-59. He published more than 20 volumes of verse, including Spring Thunder (1924) and Collected Poems (1922-38) (1939, Pulitzer Prize). He wrote three novels and several volumes of short stories and edited anthologies. His literary criticism includes work on John Dryden, William Shakespeare, and Nathanial Hawthorne as well as Introduction to Poetry (1951), which examines shorter classic poems of English and American literature.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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The Weekly Text, 24 January 2024: A Second Lesson Plan on Boxing Weight Divisions from The Order of Things

Posted on January 24, 2025 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is this second lesson plan on boxing weight divisions along with its attendant list as reading with comprehension questions. The first lesson in this series is available in the Weekly Text for 13 December 2024. This lesson joins a growing assortment of materials on boxing on this blog, which experience has shown me is of high interest to certain students. Hence, I have tagged this as high interest material.

This lesson, as in all lessons carrying the title The Order of Things, were suggested by and therefore adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book of the same name, which I highly recommend.

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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Harlan Ellison on Childhood

Posted on January 17, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Nobody gets out of childhood alive.”

Harlan Ellison

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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

Posted on January 17, 2025 | Leave a comment

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

The teacher encouraged the principal to learn the spelling of the noun matinee.

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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Corollary

Posted on January 17, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Corollary (noun): An assertion or proposition that follows implicitly, with little or no proof, from a given statement; an immediate deduction or inference; natural consequence, parallel, or accompaniment. Adjective: corollary

‘If this book doesn’t make you angry, it wasn’t worth writing.’ As any logician can tell you, the corollary of the above quotation is not necessarily true, that is, if the book does make you angry, it does not necessarily follow that it was worth writing. Laurence Urdang, Verbatim“

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

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Cultural Literacy: Hit Below the Belt

Posted on January 17, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “hit below the belt.” This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading (the first of one is a mildly unwieldy compound which might require revision for some readers) and three comprehension questions.

As you know, this idiom denotes issues of fair play. It arrives in the vernacular from boxing, in which hitting below the belt is illegal. This worksheet might be useful with other materials on boxing available on this blog. Since boxing, in my experience, tends to be of high interest, especially to boys and young men, I have tagged this post as such.

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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