Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun equity. This is a word, I think, that we want our students to know both in theory and practice–now and forever.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “bone to pick.” This is a half-page worksheet with three questions.
It’s a solid explication of the expression, and calls upon students to cite an instance when they had a bone to pick with someone. However, this is yet another document in Microsoft Word, so you may do with it as you wish or need.
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.
Here is a reading on Enron along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
Why does anybody need this? Maybe they don’t. But if you want your students to learn about fraud and corporate corruption, then maybe they need it. At the very least, Enron’s story is a cautionary tale about a lot of things, including corporate executives who are legends in their own minds; there seem to me to be a lot of those around these days.
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.
Here is a learning support on using that and which in declarative sentences from Paul Brians’ book, Common Errors in English Usage, which he has helpfully and generously published on the Washington State University website.
I confess that I don’t find this short passage particularly helpful in using these two words, bound up as they are with restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses in sentences (a lesson on which is forthcoming on this blog). That said, this document, like several others of its type, contains only a couple of short paragraphs. So, as a Microsoft Word document with a lot of open space, it is yours to do with as you wish or need.
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.
Here, in as short an order as possible are three context clues worksheets on the noun doctrine, the adjective doctrinal, and the adjective doctrinaire. Why three? Honestly, I don’t remember. I can say with confidence that I wrote these in response to the regular use, particularly in social studies texts, of the noun doctrine. As you probably know, it’s difficult to talk about the Roman Catholic Church, for example, and its role in European politics and statecraft, without encountering one or all three of these words. In any case, doctrine means, variously: “something that is taught b : a principle or position or the body of principles in a branch of knowledge or system of belief : DOGMA c : a principle of law established through past decisions d : a statement of fundamental government policy esp. in international relations e : a military principle or set of strategies”
You probably already know that in order to teach or otherwise inculcate doctrine, you indoctrinate someone.
It’s also worth mentioning that while I have written the worksheet on doctrinaire for its use as an adjective, the word also can be used as a noun, in which case it means “one who attempts to put into effect an abstract doctrine or theory with little or no regard for practical difficulties.” I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it used that way, but if the lexicographers at Merriam-Webster say it is, then I believe them. As far as doctrinal goes, as an adjective, it means “of, relating to, or preoccupied with doctrine.”
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.
“Business for Right. ‘He has no business to go there.’”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Last but not least today, here is a worksheet on the Latin roots man, mani, and manu. This is an extremely productive set of roots in the English language. Have you sat for a manicure lately? Then you already know these roots mean hand.
You’ll also find these three roots at the root of commonly used words in English like manuscript, manipulate, manual (think manual labor–work done with one’s hands), and manufacture. All of these are words students will need to know before 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.
Hot off the press, here is a reading on St. Lawrence Seaway along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This is a good short, general history of the seaway.
That said, comparisons with the Erie Canal come up in the text. This might be a good set of documents to serve as a comparative study of these two trade routes. In my experience, many high-stakes tests in high school are about technological advances and their effect on society, culture, and, in this case, trade.
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.
Here are a pair of context clues worksheets, one on the noun confederate, and the other on the noun confederation. These are obviously key words for any instruction on the Civil War in the United States between 1861 and 1865.
It’s well worth mentioning that confederate also has use in English as an adjective and a verb. These words carry a strong Latin pedigree, the verb confoederatus, “to unite by league.” This word isn’t commonly used in English, or at least American English, perhaps because it carries the taint of the rebellion in the United States to protect the Southern planters’ prerogative to commodify human beings and hold them in servitude.
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.
Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun contraband. You probably know that this solid word of Latin origin means, both as a noun and an adjective (it doesn’t morph as an adjective, but stays in its noun form, contraband), “illegal or prohibited traffic in goods : SMUGGLING” and “goods or merchandise whose importation, exportation, or possession is forbidden; also : smuggled goods.”
What you may not know, and what may surprise you, is that even in the latest edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (the lexicon of choice at Mark’s Text Terminal), contraband continues to carry the meaning “a slave who during the American Civil War escaped to or was brought within the Union lines.” In other words, this definition provides a lucid (and, arguably, lurid) glance into the mentality that reduced human beings with darker skin, but with human consciousness and agency nonetheless, to commodities. As such, this otherwise modest definition opens the door for a critical look at slavery and white supremacy in the United States.
What is an essential question here? Well, I might start with “How and why did people become ‘goods’ in the American mind?” But there are all kinds of those questions in this definition.
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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