Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

Word Root Exercise: Arch, Archi, Arche/o, and Archae/o

Here is a worksheet on the Greek roots arc , archi, archeo, and archae/o. They mean rule, chief, first, and ancient. You can probably see archaeology (i.e. the study of ancient things) growing from the final of the four, but the others are a bit more obscure. There is an element of polysemy in these roots, which may make this worksheet, or at least finding the pattern of meaning in the words on it, a bit more difficult for students.

Still, when you think of words like archenemy, included in this document, archbishop, or archdiocese, suddenly chief and first come into sharper focus. Likewise monarch, archetype and hierarchy, also both present in this worksheet, reinforce those meanings. As far as rule is concerned, many of the political and social positions described by words growing from this root do indeed rule, as well as promulgate rules.

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.

Write It Right: Citizen for Civilian

“Citizen for Civilian. A soldier may be a citizen, but is not a civilian.”

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

Stentorian (adj)

Though it’s usefulness in the high school classroom may be dubious, here, nonetheless, is a context clues worksheet on the adjective stentorian. It means, simply, “extremely loud.” Unless this word is useful in, say, a forensics team lesson or anything else related to formal debate, I don’t know where or why to teach it. It’s not exactly a high-frequency word in English. I assume I wrote this because at some point it was the Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster.

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.

Cicero

Last but not least on this cool Sunday morning in southwestern Vermont, here is a reading on Cicero along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

This is a good general introduction to the great Roman orator. I assembled this material with a variety of uses in mind, including a biographical research paper the freshman global studies curriculum in my New York City high school assigned. But Marcus Tullus Cicero is a key figure in world history, so I can think of a lot of uses for this material. For example, this summer I had the good fortune to become involved with professional development in Debate-Centered Instruction; I might open a unit on debate and rhetoric with these documents.

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.

Lollygag (vi)

It’s the Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster, so here is a context clues on the verb lollygag. It means, variously but in same vein, “fool around,” “dawdle,” and (from the Word of the Day page itself) “to fool around and waste time” and “to spend time doing things that are not useful.” The verb is only used intransitively, so it will never take a direct object: you don’t lollygag something, you just lollygag.

I understand this slangy word isn’t at the top of the list of the lexicon we need students to accumulate in high school. Nonetheless, with its onomatopoetic character, even charm, it has its virtues. In any case, as a sometimes workaholic (the respectable addiction), I want to make the case for lollygagging as an occasional and necessary part of life.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Grand Unified Theory

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Grand Unified Theory of the origins of the universe, specifically the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. This is a half-page worksheet with a three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions.

This isn’t really my bailiwick, but I do understand that, as the reading concludes, that the Grand Unified theory “…explains the lack of antimatter in the universe.”

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.

Elvis Presley

Here is a reading on Elvis Presley along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This has tended to be high-interest material for some students, so I have tagged it as such.

For other students, Elvis may be of no interest whatsoever. I’d just like to mention that he presents an interesting case study on cultural appropriation. Did you know “Hound Dog” (which has been recorded, according to the song’s Wikipedia page, “more than 250 times”) was originally a hit for Big Mama Thornton (which was answered, humorously, by Rufus Thomas in his song “Bear Cat“) and was a number one hit for her on the R&B charts? Of that the first song (and his first hit single) he ever recorded, at Sun Studio’s Memphis Recording Service, was “That’s All Right,” composed by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup

In other words, this is a good reading to open a discussion about how white artists, especially in the 1950s, helped themselves to the work of black artists and got rich doing it. This is so well documented at this point that if you search “white artists not paying royalties to black artists” you will find a trove of information about this practice. Even gigantic media company BMG admits Black artists were cheated out of fair contracts and royalty payments. I salute Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy for calling for reparations to Black recording artists.

There is a lot to chew on here. The essential question here is something like “What is cultural appropriation and what is outright theft? What is the difference?”

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.

Sororal (adj)

Here is a context clues context clues worksheet on the adjective sororal. As you can probably hear, this word means “of, relating to, or characteristic of a sister.” If your students plan to belong to a sorority, then this might be a handy word to know. Outside this relatively narrow use, there just might not be a lot of need for this document.

Incidentally, did you know the noun sororate means “the marriage of one man to two or more sisters usually successively and after the first wife has been found to be barren or after her death.” It’s a relatively recent word, apparently, first coined in 1910–though like the other words in this post, it originates with the Latin soror, “sister.”

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.

Common Errors in English Usage: Garner (vt), Garnish (vt)

Here is a worksheet on differentiating the use of the verbs garner and garnish, two verbs that sound alike but mean very different things (here is a context clues worksheet on garnish I wrote a few days back because it was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day.) This is a full-page worksheet with a five-sentence reading and ten modified cloze exercises.

For the purposes of this worksheet, garner means “to acquire by effort,” “earn.” “accumulate”, and “collect.” Garnish, on the other hand, means “to add decorative or savory touches to (food or drink).” Both of these verbs are used only transitively, so don’t forget your direct object. You must garner something (praise, awards, evidence, sympathy) just as you must garnish something–a pork chop, a hot fudge sundae, a birthday cake).

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.

Word Root Exercise: E-

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word root e-, a tiny morpheme that means, simply, out. If you’ve used other word root worksheets on this blog, you’ll quickly see that this is not among the strongest of them I’ve assembled. At the same time, words like egress, eject, and elude–not to mention educate (in the sense of “drawing out of”) to carry connotations, if not outright denotations, of out.

Still, this is a tough inferential nut to crack.

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.