Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

Learning Support: English Language Arts Posters Text

Posted on April 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

For a variety of reasons, I have always found the kinds of classroom decorations available for purchase in “teachers’ stores” (what the heck is a teachers store, anyway?) to be insincerely cheerful and annoyingly inauthentic. For that reason, I developed a short unit on making classroom posters. One component of this exercise is this raw text for making classroom posters on English Language Arts topics.

Observing students as they work on creating posters helps me assess a wide range of student abilities, including organizing and executing a task as well as persisting to finish that task, following directions, reading, writing, and spelling, and understanding the basic concepts the text outlines.

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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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Reference, Worksheets

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Gravity

Posted on April 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here are a short reading on gravity and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Bowdlerizing

Posted on April 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

If you happen to need it, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Thomas Bowdler and the act–essentially a form of censorship–that bears his name, bowdlerizing.

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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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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Verdict (n)

Posted on April 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun verdict. It’s a word that is so commonly used, both literally and figuratively, across a variety of contexts, in English that its necessity hardly needs explaining.

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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Word Root Exercise: Deca, Dec, Deka, Deci

Posted on April 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

This worksheet on the Latin roots deca, dec, deka, and deci can assist students in a number of ways I think. These mean, as you probably already recognized, ten; be aware though, that deci actually means tenth. In any case, this is a vocabulary builder, but contains words primarily from  mathematics, so it’s probably best used there to assist students in developing their own understanding and using words growing from these  roots.

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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Psychiatrists and Psychologists

Posted on April 9, 2019 | Leave a comment

Health care has been something of a hot potato in the United States for a very long time; and certainly the debate around what looks to me like a basic human right has grown extremely contentious with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. I want the students I serve to know something about health care. And as many young people today require the services of mental health professionals, they should know what they’re looking for and buying.

So here is a short reading on the difference between psychiatrists and psychologists and its attendant 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.

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Triskaidekaphobia (n)

Posted on April 9, 2019 | Leave a comment

When I was a kid, I loved weird, big words, because they allowed me the pleasure of pedantry. So this context clues worksheet on the noun triskaidekaphobia would have been right up my alley. It means “fear or avoidance of the number thirteen.”

If nothing else, this might be a fun way to introduce the concept of phobias.

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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Compliment (n) and Complement (n)

Posted on April 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

These five worksheets on the homophones compliment and complement are actually the first I ever wrote. You’ll notice that I set up the worksheets to use these words as nouns. Because it turns up as a term of art in any number of grammar and style manuals, I wanted students to learn the use of complement as a grammatical term. It’s used in all kinds of ways, even sometimes to describe a predicate, which I think is better called, simply, a predicate.

However, as a means of describing both the direct objects and the indirect objects of verbs, I think this is a very good word indeed. I’m fairly certain I placed all five of these worksheets as do-now exercises at various places in a thirteen-lesson unit on verbs. If you use them the same way, you may want to mention to students that both of these words can be used as verbs; both are used transitively.

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.

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Word Root Exercise: Log/o

Posted on April 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

On a rainy morning, here is a worksheet on the Greek word root log/o. It means word, discourse, and doctrine. Logos was a big concept in the ancient Greek world. You can hear it, of course, at the basis of the English word logic.

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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Charlemagne

Posted on April 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

There’s already a short independent practice worksheet on Charlemagne in these pages. He is a major figure in world history, so here is a slightly longer reading on Charlemagne and a vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet to accompany it.

If you find typos in this 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.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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