Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Aesop’s Fables: “The Boy Bathing”

On a ninety-degree day in Vermont, here, appropriately, is a lesson plan on the Aesop’s fable “The Boy Bathing.” You’ll need this reading and inquiry questions for students to conduct the lesson. You’ll notice, as you will in all of these lessons I’ve posted on Aesop’s fables, that there is plenty of room to expand the range and nature of the questions on the worksheet. That’s by design. Aesop’s fables are miniature lessons in philosophy, and the kinds of questions they arouse can be improvised based on student perception, interest, and need.

Incidentally, this is the last of these I have to post at the moment. I could write more relatively easily. Are you using them? If so, leave a comment, and I’ll put writing a few more on my to-do list.

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.

Term of Art: Relative

“Relative: Indicating reference to or dependence on an antecedent word, phrase, or clause, or introducing a subordinate clause, e.g., ‘which,’ ‘who,’ ‘whatever.’”

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

Crux (n)

It’s Merriam-Webster’s word of the day today, so here is context clues worksheet on the noun crux. The crux of this to me is that it seems like a word–and a concept represented by the word–that graduating high school seniors ought to have in their linguistic toolboxes.

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.

Draft Riots

Now seems like a perfect time to post this reading on the draft riots in New York City in 1863 and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. These events were, among other things, an outbreak of racist violence that included the arson against the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan–a stunningly shameful attack in an epoch of shameful acts.

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.

Term of Art: Reflexive

“Reflexive: Indicating an action or the agent or grammatical subject upon itself, that is, with the subject and object being the same person or thing, e.g., ‘She feeds herself’ or (implicitly reflexive) ‘She keeps in shape.’”

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

The Weekly Text, June 19, 2019: A Lesson on the Simple Past Tense of Verbs

This week’s Text, is a lesson plan on the simple past tense of verbs. I begin this lesson after a class change with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the famous proverb “Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned” (I’ve often heard this expression attributed to Shakespeare, but it actually comes from a play by Restoration dramatist William Congreve, “The Mourning Bride“). If circumstances necessitate a second day for this lesson, then here is another do-now exercise, this one a homophones worksheet on the worksheet on the adjectives veracious and voracious. You’ll need this scaffolded worksheet which is the primary work of this lesson; you and your students might also find useful this learning support and word bank. Finally, here is teacher’s copy of the 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.

Cultural Literacy: Radioactive Waste

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on radioactive waste if you have any use for it. It seems to me if we are going to generate garbage like this and not find a way to store it safely, then we have an obligation to make sure our students understand what it is and how it might affect their future.

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.

Television

Finally, on this fine summer day, here is a reading on the origins and development of television as a technology and a cultural force along with its 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.

Salutation (n), Valediction (n)

These context clues worksheets on the nouns salutation and valediction might be useful at most schools to introduce these two concepts–useful for understanding forms of correspondence–to your students. You could also use them as they are, or rewrite them, to introduce the words salutatorian and valedictorian to your graduating seniors.

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.

Term of Art: Privative

Privative: Indicating lack of loss of, absence of, or negation, e.g., the prefixes ‘un-,’ ‘a-,’ ‘non-,’ the suffix ‘-less.'”

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