“Attain for Accomplish. ‘By diligence we attain our purpose.’ A purpose is accomplished; success is attained.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“Attain for Accomplish. ‘By diligence we attain our purpose.’ A purpose is accomplished; success is attained.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Here, on a beautiful fall morning, is a a context clues worksheet on the verb reciprocate; it’s used both intransitively and transitively. Its use as a noun in the reciprocals of fractions was something I saw students struggle with in the few instances I taught math, Maybe knowing this verb, and using it in context, might help with understanding reciprocals in fractions.
If not, at least kids will know a very commonly used verb in 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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on The Birth of a Nation, the infamous 1915 film by D.W. Griffith. I think now is a good time for students to learn about this piece of racist propaganda.
There, I got that out on the page. I’ve been walking around this document, metaphorically speaking, for months. In fact, I have a good deal of material about this film–and know more about it than I care to admit. Suffice to say this: this film innovated production techniques and really represents the birth of the long-form, narrative cinema we take for granted today. Even the Marxist auteur Sergei Eisenstein admired D.W. Griffith’s advances in technique while deploring the racism of The Birth of a Nation.
Generally, this film in its “artistic” and commercial dimensions offers a lot of grist for the critical mill. I am still working up to posting more material about this hot-button issue. For now, this short exercise will have to suffice.
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.
“Lettrism: A phenomenon since the 1950s, lettrism is the juxtaposition of letters, words, signs, and pictographic symbols with visual effect as the primary concern and with the meaning (if any) of secondary importance. Concrete poetry is a form of lettrism, but here the verbal meaning is as important as the design. Also called typewriter art.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
You’ll find it in a number of very commonly used words in the English language, so here is a worksheet on the Greek word root mania, which means excessive desire and mental aberration. For any students interested in psychology or work in the health care professions, understanding of this root is de rigueur; but, again, this is such a productive root in English that all students really ought to 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.
“Pronominal Possessive: Possessive pronoun such as hers, its, and theirs.”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
From my current perch, waiting out the pandemic in Southwestern Vermont, time and place dictate that I post this context clues worksheet on the noun raptor. I can’t remember why I wrote this, but I have to assume it was the Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster.
It means “bird of prey.” Students might connect it with that feared creature of the Jurassic Park movie franchise, the velociraptor. Also, now you know what you’ll see if you visit the Raptor Center at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science over in Quechee.
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.
If you have any students with an interest in aviation, here is an Order of Things lesson on the checklist of steps pilots use to assure their aircraft is ready to fly. You’ll need the worksheet with list as reading and comprehension questions to do 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.
Is Sinclair Lewis taught at the high school level? I don’t remember encountering him, with Babbitt, until I was well into my twenties. He was the first writer from the United States to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. I don’t remember seeing his books around the high school in which I served for ten years.
If you just want to introduce him to your students, or settle them after a class change, or both, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Sinclair Lewis that shouldn’t take anybody long.
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.
Let me start with the documents, to wit this reading on personal identity and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The more I think about the conceptual and personal issues attached to personal identity, and how self-identifying has empowered oppressed communities, the more I think I would like to build either a short unit or a long lesson around these documents. If that interests you, please read on.
It’s one of those big philosophical and psychological concepts, but in the realm of the classroom teacher, individuation means that students have begun the process of discovering the self, or themselves, if you prefer. In any case, identity is important. To whatever extent we can, I think we are intellectually and morally obliged to abet this process in kids.
Especially now, when social media appear, as an emerging scholarly discourse indicates, to erode individuation. If you’re interested, this stylish and literate blog post from The Literary Blues supplies a nice basic outline of the means by which social media diminishes individualism. A lesson or unit on personal identity would proceed most effectively, I submit, if it addressed these critical issues of identity and social media.
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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