Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

Word Root Exercise: Semi

Posted on April 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word root semi. It means “half” and “partly.” This root finds its way into common discourse in English–it can be used as a prefix to just about any adjective or noun to attenuate the full force of a word. So, in addition to the number of words this root grows in casual discourse (i.e. being attached to nouns and adjectives in everyday conversation), this root yields such high-frequency English words as semiannual, semicolon, semiconductor, and semifinal.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Worksheets

Tagged , , ,

Cultural Literacy: Once in a Blue Moon

Posted on April 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Once in a Blue Moon.” This is a half-page worksheet with a three-sentence reading followed by three comprehension questions. As the reading explains that a blue moon occurs only “about every thirty-two months,” students will be able to understand that this expression means the same thing, where people are concerned, as “Long time, no see,” or “I haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays.” Where events are concerned, students will infer that something that happens “once in a blue moon” doesn’t happen very often, and is, arguably, a rare event.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Worksheets

Tagged , , , ,

Audacious (adj)

Posted on April 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective audacious. It means, variously, “intrepidly daring,” “adventurous,” “recklessly bold,” “rash,” “contemptuous of law, religion, or decorum,” “insolent,” and “marked by originality and verve.” Because this word tends to cluster its meaning around the commonality of “rash,” or “bold,” which all the words and phrases above mean to some extent, this worksheet is keyed to all of the definitions above.

And if it somehow falls short, I would be very interested in your thoughts as to why–so I can improve it.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Worksheets

Tagged , ,

The Weekly Text, 29 April 2022: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Sound Waves

Posted on April 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a reading on sound waves along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Over the years, I’ve crossed paths with several students interested in careers as recording engineers or producers. I know that music is played on instruments that have evolved over centuries by persons with enviable talent; that, however, is the extent of my knowledge of music production. I hoped these documents would help students gain some understanding about the actual physics of sound. These materials have been of sufficiently high interest in my classroom that I have tagged them as such.

So this might be thin gruel where the subject is concerned. As with many of the documents I prepared over the years to engage alienated students, these were prepared in haste. So they are very likely, uh, less than perfect. Fortunately, they are both formatted in Microsoft Word, so exporting them to a word processor of your preference and tailoring them to your students’ needs will be relatively effortless.

May is Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. I’ve already prepared a batch of posts for the month, so if you need material on topics related to American of Asian and Pacific Island descent, or Asia and the Pacific Islands themselves, trundle on by the site.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

Tagged , , , , ,

Cultural Literacy: Vladimir Putin, National Self-Determination

Posted on April 20, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here a pair of Cultural Literacy worksheets that I hope are timely. The first is on Vladimir Putin. This is a full-page worksheet with a five-sentence reading and six comprehension questions. The second is on national self-determination; its a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. Nota bene, please, that this second document at its end asks the reader to “See Fourteen Points.” If you want students to follow up on that point, you’ll find a credible reading under this hyperlink.

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.

Leave a comment

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

Tagged , , , ,

Cultural Literacy: An Ounce of Prevention

Posted on April 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the proverb “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This pithy apercu comes to us from the pen of Ben Franklin. He was a master of these kinds of phrases–many of which we still use in both colloquial and formal English.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Worksheets

Tagged , , , ,

Metaphor

Posted on April 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Metaphor: (Greek “carrying from one place to another”) A figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another. The basic figure in poetry. A comparison is usually implicit; whereas in simile (q.v.) it is explicit. There are several metaphors in these lines from the beginning of R.S. Thomas’s Song at the Year’s Turning:

‘Shelley dreamed it. Now the dream decays.

The props crumble. The familiar ways

Are stale with tears trodden underfoot.

The heart’s flower withers at the root.

Bury it, then, in history’s sterile dust.

The slow years shall tame your tawny lust.’

See ORGANIC METAPHOR; TELESCOPED METAPHOR; TENOR AND VEHICLE.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference

Tagged , ,

Banish (vt)

Posted on April 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a context clues worksheeet on the verb banish. It is used only transitively so don’t forget your direct object: you must banish something–an unfaithful lover, cigarettes and the like. It means, variously, “to require by authority to leave a country,” “to drive out or remove from a home or place of usual resort or continuance,” and “to clear away, dispel.” This is a word that pops up across the humanities curriculum, and particularly in social studies. In my experience students don’t know it.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Worksheets

Tagged , ,

The Weekly Text, 22 April 2022: A Final Assessment Lesson Plan on Prepositions

Posted on April 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is this final lesson plan of the prepositions unit that I have posted piecemeal over the years. That means there is a complete unit of seven lessons on using prepositions in prose on this blog. To find them, search “prepositions lesson plans” in the little box just to your right. Your search should yield all seven lessons.

Anyway, I open this lesson with this Everyday Edit worksheet on the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The work for this lesson will extend into a second day, so here is another Everyday Edit on Sarah Chldress Polk, First Lady. If you and your students find Everyday Edits useful–I’ve had a few students over the years who have found these documents so intellectually satisfying that they asked for more of them–you can click over to Education World, where the proprietors of that site generously supply a yearlong supply of them at no cost.

Finally, here is the worksheet and organizer upon which the work of this lesson, and the entire unit, really, is inscribed.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

Tagged , , , ,

Common Errors in English Usage: Impassible (adj), Impassable (adj)

Posted on April 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on differentiating the use of the adjectives impassible and impassable in prose. Actually, this isn’t a problem, I expect, most primary and secondary students will encounter. In the event they do, however, let me summarize this full-page document, with a three-sentence reading and ten modified cloze exercises: impassible is a non-standard version of impassive, which means, variously, “giving no sign of feeling or emotion,” “unsusceptible to or destitute of emotion,” and “unsusceptible to physical feeling.”

Impassable, on the other hand, simply means “incapable of being passed, traveled, crossed, or surmounted.” If nothing else, this is a simple usage exercise capable, I think, of helping students understand why good usage makes good writing, and also meets the Common Core Standard: “(L.11-12.1b)-Resolve issues of complex or contested usage, consulting references, (e.g., Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, Garner’s Modern American Usage) as needed.” Professor Brians’ book (which, incidentally, he allows access to at no cost at the Washington State University website) works well for this task or practice, I think, particularly where emergent or struggling readers are concerned.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Worksheets

Tagged ,