Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

Annual Health Exam

OK, health teachers, if you can use them, here is a reading on the importance of an annual health exam along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. For a one-page reading, this document pack in a lot of information–perhaps all that one needs to understand why one should get a physical every year.

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.

Sociology (n)

If you can use it (I was pleased to see that the subject is taught in the Brooklyn school in which I currently serve), here is a context clues worksheet on the noun sociology. It means “the science of society, social institutions, and social relationships; specifically, the systematic study of the development, structure, interaction, and collective behavior of organized groups of human beings” as well as “the scientific analysis of a social institution as a functioning whole and as it relates to the rest of society.”

I guess there is not much more to say than that about this half-page document.

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.

A Learning Support on the Literary Terms Poetry, Prose, and Prose Poem

In response to a student question the other day about the difference between prose and poetry–the prose poem “A Story About the Body” by Robert Hass was that day’s lesson in our English class and occasioned the question–I whipped up this learning support on the literary terms poetry, prose, and prose poem. This document is a single page with three short passages of text from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. It’s basically a glossary.

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 Weekly Text, 5 November 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “False Alarm”

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “False Alarm.” I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Gallicism enfant terrible.

To conduct your investigation of this misdemeanor, you’ll need this PDF of the illustration and questions that serve as evidence and interrogative in the case. And here is the typescript of the answer key. And that’s it for another week.

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.

Barbarism

“Barbarism (noun): A word or expression considered ill-conceived usual language standards, such as dubious coinage that is a hybrid of Greek and Latin elements or a crude, ill-adapted neologism, e.g. ‘complected’ (rather than “complexioned”), ‘legalcy,’ or ‘suavitude.’

‘On the other hand, some widely popular examples of sportspeak are barbarism whose use should be a misdemeanor if not a capital offense.’ Red Smith, The New York Times.”

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

Common Errors in English Usage: Hadn’t Have, Hadn’t

Here is an worksheet on the the usage lapse that hadn’t have is, and how the simple hadn’t is the better choice for standard English prose. Having spend a lot of time trying to figure out the best ways to teach the use of auxiliary verbs like had, I appreciate this worksheet. At the same time, I don’t think I have ever heard any of my students here in New York City use the solecism of hadn’t have.

So, I’m not sure how useful this worksheet will be, or, therefore, why I wrote it. It is a full-page Microsoft Word Document with a short reading and five copy-editing/sentence-correction exercises; in other words, you can alter it to your needs. Finally, to give credit where it is so abundantly due, let me remind you that this worksheet, like every one of them under the Common Errors in English Usage banner, is based on material adapted from Paul Brians’ book of the same name, which he gives away at the Washington State University website.

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 Mississippi River

Here is a reading on the Mississippi River along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This is a relatively short reading, but packs a lot of facts into a short introduction to the Mighty Mississippi, as do most of the one-page reading from the Intellectual Devotional series. It’s one of the reasons I developed so many of these, and why you find so many of them on this blog.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Cyt/o, -Cyte

Here is a worksheet on the Greek word roots cyt/o and -cyte. They mean, simply, cell. The most commonly used words to my eye on this worksheet (which also, if the book from which I adapted this is credible, tend to appear on the SAT and other high-stakes, college gatekeeping tests), are cytoplasm and lymphocyte. If you have students looking down the road at a career in the healthcare professions, this might be a useful document. If not, not (as Gertrude Stein once said).

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.

Blog Post 5,000: A Tentative Beginning to a Unit on Writing Reviews

In six years plus of this blog, I have finally reached the 5,000-post mark. Post Number 5,000 is a set of documents that I began toward developing a unit on writing reviews some years ago while working in an ill-fated middle school in the North Bronx.

For now, however, here are the basic, undeveloped documents for this unit. Here is a a tentative unit plan, which is still mostly in template form. Likewise this lesson-plan template and this worksheet template. Here is a a glossary of critical terms  for writing film reviews. This is a start on the first worksheet of the unit.

Finally, here is a list of aesthetic criteria for evaluating cultural products. Let me mention in passing that this is for teacher use; the one time I taught kids to write reviews, I made sure that they made, with proper guidance, their own lists of aesthetic criteria for the media or event they were criticizing.

You may want to check back here later, as I am in the process of developing this long-neglected unit.

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.

Spontaneous (adj)

Last but not least on this dark Friday morning, here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective spontaneous. This is a high-frequency word in English, so it is one students should know, at the bare minimum (if you’ll indulge me while I ride on my high horse this morning), but the time 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.