Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

French and Indian War

Here is a reading on the reading on the French and Indian War (known contemporaneously in Europe as the Seven Years’ War) along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The war raged in North America between Britain and France, who had as her allies Native American tribes. This is a turning point in Great Britain’s hegemony in its North American colonies: while Britain won the conflict, it was at enormous cost. In his attempts to extract payment–by way of unpopular legislation like the Stamp Act— from the American Colonies, King George III so antagonized colonists that he provoked a revolution.

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.

The Weekly Text, December 18, 2020: Four Context Clues Worksheets on Enthusiasm (n), Enthusiast (n), Enthuse (vi/vt), and Enthusiastic (adj)

This week’s Text, which will be the last for this benighted year, is four context clues worksheets on the nouns enthusiasm and enthusiast, the verb enthuse, and the adjective enthusiastic. If you want to make a point about words as they appear across the parts of speech–known in linguistics by the term of art morphology–these might help.

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.

Vilify (vt)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb vilify. It’s used only transitively, so don’t forget your direct object: you must vilify someone. It means “to lower in estimation or importance” and “to utter slanderous and abusive statements against.” and “defame.” One of its synonyms is the transitive verb “malign,” which can also be used as an adjective. We’ve had four years of the daily exercise of the action this verb describes, so it is worth knowing when it shows up in any public discourse. 

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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

This reading on Ralph Waldo Emerson and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet might be useful in presenting high school students with a more robust biographical knowledge of this key figure in American letters. As a philosopher, Emerson was highly regarded by Friedrich Nietzsche, among others; his circle, known as the Transcendentalists, left a mark on American culture that is not always easy to trace, but of clear continuity once its traces are found.

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.

Rescind (vt)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb rescind. It’s only used transitively, so do not forget your direct object; you, or whoever or whatever the subject of your sentence is, must rescind something.

This is a very commonly used word in English, so students probably ought to know it. Perhaps seniors could learn it in the context of their admission offer to college, which could be rescinded in the event that those students succumb to the dread affliction of “senioritis.”

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.

David Hume

Like most of the material on philosophy you’ll find on this website, I wrote this reading on David Hume and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet for one of three students I served over the years who took a keen interest in philosophy. Hume is an important figure in the history of philosophy, which was the primary criterion as I labored to produce material that would keep said student or students engaged.

These documents, however, may be useful for professional development. Hume did, after all, write on issues of importance to educators, particularly in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. And for our own purposes, and perhaps for students with an interest in it, Hume’s work on skepticism is not only important to an understanding of teaching and learning, but also a cornerstone of the Enlightenment.

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.

Common Errors in English Usage: Sick (adj), Sic (vt)

Here is an English usage on the adjective sick and the transitive verb sic. Sick needs little elaboration; sic, on the other hand, does, which the reading passage clarifies by pointing up its common use as a transitive verb, generally used in the imperative form when saying to one’s dog, “Sic ’em Rollo!”

However, comprehensively and helpfully, the reading passage in this document explains the use of the Latinism sic, which means thus. If you read, you’ve encountered this (usually in italic type and often with an exclamation point for added ridicule) after a quote that contains errors of fact or lapses in style. Merriam-Webster’s defines the adverb sic as “intentionally so written — used after a printed word or passage to indicate that it is intended exactly as printed or to indicate that it exactly reproduces an original <said he seed [~] it all>.” I think if I were teaching this document to more advanced learners, I would take the time to make sure they understood sic as an editorial annotation so that they might use it in their own writing.

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.

Henry David Thoreau

On a snowy Vermont morning, here is a Henry David Thoreau along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I’ll assume that I needn’t belabor the continuing relevance to Thoreau’s work–I think Walden, or Life in the Woods is still taught in some high school classrooms. It might be worth taking a look, in these times, at some of his political and philosophical work–particularly “Civil Disobedience.” Moreover, it doesn’t take much work to help students develop their own understanding of the connections between Thoreau, Mohandas Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In any case, it’s difficult to avoid Thoreau’s influence in social justice and peace movements around the world.

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: Lite, Ite

OK, I haven’t published one in some time, so here is a worksheet on the Greek word roots lite and ite. They mean mineral, rock, stone, and fossil, which why you find them at the base of words like granite and bauxite.

In other words these are words used in the sciences–and are therefore important for literacy in science classes.

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.

Lucrative (adj)

On this Monday morning, it’s the Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster; to my surprise, having worked for ten years in an economic-and-finance-themed high school in Lower Manhattan, I somehow hadn’t written a context clues on the adjective lucrative. By any standard, this is a very commonly used word in the the English language, thus one students should know by the time they leave 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.