Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

Write It Right: Admission for Admittance

“Admission for Admittance. ‘The price of admission is one dollar.’”

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

Imbroglio (n)

While it’s probably not a word students need to know before they leave high school, this context clues worksheet on the noun imbroglio might nonetheless be of some use. If nothing else, the word possesses a nice onomatopoeic quality.

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 the Crime and Puzzlement Case “An 8-Cent Story”

This lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “An 8-Cent Story” is the penultimate lesson in the first of the three Crime and Puzzlement units I wrote a couple of years ago.

This lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the American idiom “Curiosity Killed the Cat.” Here is the PDF of the reading and questions that drive the lesson; finally, here is the typescript of the answer key.

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.

Atom Bomb

Moving right along on this warm and oddly muggy December afternoon, here is a reading on the atom bomb and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

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.

Heresy (n), Heretic (n), and Heretical (adj)

Because they came up frequently in various social studies classes I co-taught in New York City, I wrote these two context clues worksheets on the noun heretic and the adjective heretical. I was going to comment that I probably should have written another one on the noun heresy, but a glance in the folder that holds all these documents reveals I already did–it’s under that link.

It’s hard to imagine students understanding religious history, and particularly the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

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: Terr, Terra, and Terri

Here is a word root worksheet on the Latin word roots terr, terra, and terri. These three roots, which mean both earth and land, are very productive in English–you may even have a terrarium in your home or classroom.

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, December 13, 2019: A Lesson Plan on Placing Quotes in a Synthetic Research Paper

Okay, Friday has rolled around again, and it is the end of a momentous week for this author. To make a long story short, I now own a car for the first time in almost 17 years.

This week’s Text, from my ongoing endeavor to write a couple of units on the art of argumentation and the craft of composing a synthetic research paper, is a complete lesson plan on the art of quoting in a paper. I wrote this context clues worksheet on criterion and criteria, which are, respectively, a singular and a plural noun, specifically for this lesson. As I look at this document today, I realize that depending on how one deals with it, and who one is teaching, that this worksheet could stand on its own as a lesson (and I have one on datum and data in the works). Finally, here is the worksheet that is at the center of this lesson and affords students an opportunity to try their hands directly at quoting within a larger body of text.

That’s it! It’s Friday the 13th, so step lightly and carefully.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Roman a Clef

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the roman a clef. The worksheet explains the term and the concept it represents, but I’d still like to use it in roughly the same sentence I used when at age 17 I made my first pedantic statement: “Jack Kerouac’s On The Road is a roman a clef. ”

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.

Hybrid (n)

Her, is a context clues worksheet on the noun hybrid. This is a word, I would think, that turns up in high school 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.

Battle of Saratoga

If you need it, here is a reading on the Battle of Saratoga and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. This was an important moment in the American Revolution, and therefore am important moment in United States history.

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.