Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

Cultural Literacy: Stanza

OK, moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a stanza in poetry and poetics. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions. A clear, simple, and symmetrical introduction to this important concept in studying poetry.

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.

Coherence

“Coherence (noun): Order and sense in expression, or ease and interrelationship in arrangement of thoughts or parts of a sentence; logical consistency or clarity of syntax. Adjective: coherent; Adverb: coherently; Verb: cohere.

“Every man in the chapel hoped that when his hour came he, too, would be eulogized, which is to say forgiven, and that all of his lapses, greeds, errors, and strayings from the truth would be invested with coherence and looked upon with charity.’ James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son.”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

The Weekly Text, 3 November 2023: Styling Sentences Lesson 15, Sentences with a Series of Lively Pairs

Today is the first Friday of Native American Heritage Month 2023 in the United States (Canada observes this month in June as National Indigenous History Month). I have materials to post, including a couple of Cultural Literacy worksheets today.

However, in order to keep them in a relatively tight series, this morning I post the fifteenth and final lesson plan of the Styling Sentences Unit, this one on sentences with a series of lively pairs. Nouns are one of the workhorses of the English language (along with verbs), and this lesson illustrates for students how solid, concrete nouns that appeal to the senses make prose come alive.

This lesson opens with this on parsing sentences to find conjunctions. This scaffolded and supported worksheet is the primary work of the lesson. Finally, here is a learning support in the form of a word bank to help students master this sentence form using pairs of lively nouns or noun phrases.

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 English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Mean

Finally this morning, here is a worksheet on the verb mean as it is used with an infinitive. I mean to visit Coney Island this weekend.

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: Loch Ness Monster

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Loch Ness Monster, a subject of no small fascination for me when I was a child in school (which is why I have tagged it as high-interest material, which I suspect it will still be for a certain type of elementary school student). This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading, both longish compounds, so you may want to take a look at them if you have emergent readers or English language learners on your hands, and three comprehension questions.

Somewhere along the line, I gathered the impression that Nessie, as the monster is affectionately known, was definitively disproved as a hoax. The reading in this document does not mention it, nor, particularly, does the Wikipedia page for the Loch Ness Monster. (The page, at its bottom, however, does warn that the article “…may lend undue weight to fringe sources and hypotheses.” For my part, I remain–mostly–agnostic.)

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, 27 October 2023: Styling Sentences Lesson 14, Using the Serial Comma

Believe it or not, after all these weeks, we’re down to the penultimate lesson in the Styling Sentences Unit: ergo, this week’s Text is the fourteenth lesson plan in the series, this one on what strikes me as an important area of English usage and punctuation, using the serial comma.

This lesson opens with this worksheet on parsing sentences to find adjectives. Here is the scaffolded and supported worksheet that is the centerpiece of the lesson. Finally, here is a learning support on using the serial comma.

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.

Millefiori

“Millefiori: (It., a thousand flowers) Glassmaking technique in which rods of colored glass are fused, after which the bundled mass is cut transversely. The flower-like sections are used for beads and also embedded in clear glass for decorative effects.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

Common English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Manage

Alright, last but not least this morning, here is a worksheet on the verb manage as followed by an infinitive. It will take some time, but eventually I will manage to publish all the worksheets on gerunds and infinitives that I made the mistake of developing.

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: Janus

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Janus, the “Roman god of doors and gateways and hence of beginnings,” as the four-sentence reading on this document explains. There are three comprehension questions accompanying the reading. I remember puzzling over Janus, the two-faced god, mostly because of the multiplicity and complexity of his myth and interpretation. As you probably know, Janus is represented with two faces, one young and one old, looking in opposite directions.

But did you know that the month of January is named for him? Or that to be Janus-faced is to be duplicitous, or two-faced? While I understand the image of Janus (if nothing else from watching films from the production company bearing his name), I have struggled for some reason with some of the abstractions that appear with his name on them.

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.

Colloquialism

“Colloquialism (noun): Spoken of conversational expression; familiar or informal English that falls between standard English and slang; everyday speech; an informal word or expression, or (loosely) a local or dialectical usage.

‘I had to learn American just like a foreign language. To learn it, I had to study and analyze it. As a result, when I use slang, colloquialisms, snide talk or any kind of off-beat language I do it deliberately.’ Raymond Chandler, Raymond Chandler Speaking.

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.