Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

A Lesson Plan on Technological Advancement in the Ages of Metals

Moving right along (see the documents posts below) with a specialized set of lesson plans on prehistory and ancient history, here is a lesson plan on the ages of metals. I opened this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun caravan. As the lesson goes into its second day (I’m fairly certain I intended to do that, again, as below, when I wrote it), here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Seven Wonders of the World. Finally, here is the worksheet with its reading and comprehension questions.

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.

A Lesson Plan on the Earliest Civilizations: Asia

As below, here is a lesson plan on the earliest civilizations in Asia. Like the rest of the global studies lessons I will post here roughly seriatim (with the usual intervening quotes), this is one version of several lessons I wrote over the years with an eye toward best preparing the students I served to take the New York State Regents Examination in Global Studies and Geography. I forget now which year these lessons represent, but it was certainly a year in which the test was reportedly up for change.

I opened this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the verb banish. If the lesson goes into a second day–and as I unpack and take a second look at these lessons, I seem to recall deliberately writing them to extend over two days so that I could assess how ably students retained knowledge from the previous day–then here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Mesopotamia which you might consider using as an independent practice (i.e. homework) assignment. Finally, here is the in-class worksheet with a reading and comprehension questions.

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.

Write It Right: Allow for Permit

“Allow for Permit. ‘I allow you to go.’ Precision is better attained by saying permit, for allow has other meanings.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

Parsimonious (adj)

It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, so here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective parsimonious. It’s a strong word as far as adjectives go, Latin in origin, and a good word for students to know, I submit.

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.

Appomattox Court House

OK, here is a reading on the Appomattox Court House along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As you probably know, the Appomattox Court House is where Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865–in other words, the very last day the Confederate flag should have been seen in our public life in the United States. This reading is about the surrender itself and the two men whose names (as above) we associate with 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.

Term of Art: Appositive

“Appositive: A noun or noun phrase that renames or adds identifying information to a noun it immediately follows. His brother, an accountant with Arthur Andersen, was recently promoted.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

Common Errors in English Usage: Aisle, Isle

OK, here is an English usage worksheet on differentiating the use of the nouns aisle and isle. When I was writing this yesterday, I had a sense of deja vu. So I checked the archives here at the Text Terminal and sure enough, I’ve previously written five homophone worksheets on these two words.

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.

Histrionic (adj)

It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, so here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective histrionic. This is a solid modifier that is so commonly used in English that high school students probably ought to learn 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.

Bromide (n)

It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, so I developed this context clues worksheet on the noun bromide just now. I won’t argue that this is a word high school students need to know; at the same time, given the debauched state of our political discourse, I think this is a word whose time is now.

That said, the current administration obviously prefers a thumb-in-the-eye style of communications. Given that this word means (outside of describing a binary chemical compound of bromine and something else) “a commonplace or tiresome person: BORE” and “a commonplace or hackneyed statement or notion,” a political leader who, after 130,000 deaths and rising in a pandemic says everything is just fine, isn’t just indulging in a weakness for the commonplace idiocies of bromides, he is showing delusion, mendacity, and cruelty.

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.

Jane Austen

English teachers, do you teach Jane Austen? I’ve worked in a couple of high schools, and I don’t recall that she was taught in either place. I put together this reading on Jane Austen and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet for a student who had seen the 1995 film Clueless, discovered that it was based on Jane Austen’s novel Emma, and wanted to know more about that novel, a comedy of manners.

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.