Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

Word Root Exercise: Bar/o

This  worksheet on the Greek word root bar/o yields in English, as Greek roots tend to, a number of words related to the physical sciences. In this case, bar/o means pressure and weight. You find it at the base of weather-related words like barometer and millibar.

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: Renumeration and Remuneration

Here’s an English usage worksheet on differentiating the use of renumeration and remuneration. In reality, since neither renumeration nor the verb from which it would spring, renumerate, are words that have disappeared under the much crisper recount (although renumerate can also mean to renumber–also crisper than renumerate) this is a worksheet on the meaning and use of the noun remuneration.

To remunerate simply means “to pay an equivalent for.” When you receive your paycheck, your employer remunerated for your labor.

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: Liberalism

Because it presents an extremely narrow, time-bound (it restricts the refers to liberalism only in its manifestation in the twentieth century) definition of the ideology, I almost trashed this Cultural Literacy worksheet on liberalism.

Talk radio hosts and social media have reduced liberalism, a complicated political and moral philosophy to a caricature of itself. This worksheet, while narrowly useful, doesn’t generally help much in clearing up misconceptions about this Enlightenment ideology.

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.

Negligent (adj)

Alright, as the coronavirus continues to blaze a second trail across the United Stages, now seems like a perfect time to publish this context clues worksheet on the adjective negligent. However, I wonder if in teaching the concept of negligence, it might be better to start with the verb, neglect. The framework of this document should, I think, make it easy to produce your own context clues worksheets on those words.

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.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

By posting this reading on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that it is appropriate for high-schoolers (it might be, for the right ones), or of particularly high interest (again, it might be, for the right one) or demand. I actually wrote this for one student who was very interested in philosophy, but not otherwise interested in school.

Anyway, any reading on Liebniz can complement a calculus class, particularly if you want students to know something about the history of the field. More broadly, if you are conducting inquiry into the Enlightenment, or teaching Voltaire’s Candide, this material will provide some context for that novella.

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.

Futile (adj)

It’s a great word for students to know in this day and age, so I hasten to publish this context clues worksheet on the adjective futile. It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today; it’s also a word in very common use in the English language, so students really ought to know it by the time they move the tassel on their mortarboards.

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.

Charles Manson

Charles Manson’s death in late 2017 prompted a flurry of questions from the students I was serving at the time. As I do whenever students demonstrate an interest in something, I worked up some new materials, to wit, this reading on Charles Manson and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

And while I’m neither proud of or happy with the fact, these documents quickly became high-interest materials in my classroom. Ergo, they appear here. Did I mention I’m not exactly happy about students’ interest in this monster?

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: Ax

Moving right along this morning, here is a worksheet on the Latin word root ax. It means, simply, axis. If you click on that hyperlink, however, you’ll see that “simply” isn’t the right word: axis is a complex polysemous word in English. In any case, I suspect this document would be useful in a certain kind of math class, or perhaps a mechanical drawing course. At the same time, it is also a general vocabulary-building exercise.

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 Lesson Plan on Data Storage from The Order of Things

As you get older, you take it for granted, but it’s still fun to experience synchrony. A friend of mine and I land on synchrony quite often while texting–often using the same words simultaneously. In this case, the same day I interviewed with some very nice, clearly talented, unusually engaged and deeply committed folks at a computer-themed career and technical education high school in the North Bronx, I pulled out this lesson plan on data storage, adapted from text I grabbed from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s The Order of Things. I expect this would work well at a school such as theirs. I hope they find their way to it.

For your students, here is the list as reading and comprehension questions, which is the work of this lesson.

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.

Kiln (n)

If you are of a certain age, you wouldn’t need this context clues worksheet on the noun kiln because you would have had an art class, where you would have had a chance to shape clay and fire it into a ceramic object–using a kiln. Now, however, since we as a society appear to have resolved that children don’t need arts instruction, kids have fewer and fewer interactions with industrial objects like kilns. So we can’t count on their knowing what a kiln is or what it does.

In any case, it was the Word of the Day today at Merriam-Webster; as you can see, I couldn’t let it pass without comment or context clues 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.