Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

A Lesson Plan on Hesiod’s Ages of History from The Order of Things

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a lesson plan on Hesiod’s Ages of History along with its reading and comprehension questions. As I’ve mentioned previously when posting these materials, this lesson (and at least 30 others like it) are something I started working on just before the COVID19 pandemic scaled up and closed schools, and I lost my job as a public school teacher.

To reiterate (and you can read more about these on the “About Posts & Texts” page linked to just above the banner photograph on the homepage of this site), these documents aim to give students an opportunity to work with, and develop their own understanding of, moving between two sets of symbols, words and numbers, in one lesson. The worksheet can be contracted or expanded as is appropriate for the attention spans of the students with whom you’re working. These are, as you will infer, literacy development exercises.

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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Elementary Principles of Composition: Choose a Suitable Design and Hold to It.

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

[If you would like this passage as a learning support in Microsoft Word, it’s under that hyperlink.]

“12. Choose a suitable design and hold to it.

 A basic structural design underlies every kind of writing. Writers will in part follow this design, in part deviate from it, according to their skills, their needs, and the unexpected events that accompany the act of composition. Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the thoughts of the writer, but not necessarily in the order in which those thoughts occur. This calls for a scheme of procedure. In some cases, the best design is no design, as with a love letter, which is simply an outpouring, or with a casual essay, which is a ramble. But in most cases, planning must be a deliberate prelude to writing. The first principle of composition, therefore, is to foresee or determine the shape of what is to come and pursue that shape.

A sonnet is built on a fourteen-line frame, each line containing five feet. Hence, sonneteers know exactly where they are headed, although they may not know how to get there. Most forms of composition are less clearly defined, more flexible, but all have skeletons to which the writer will bring the flesh and blood. The more clearly the writer perceives the shape, the better are the chances of success.”

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

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Word Root Exercise: Ped/o

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Yesterday, I posted a worksheet on the Latin roots ped, pedi, and -pede; if you scroll down–it’s 12 posts below this one–you’ll find it. As that post relays, in Latin these roots mean foot and feet.

Now here’s a worksheet on the Greek word root ped-o. In Greek this root means, simply, child. As with its Latin counterpart, this is a very productive root in English, forming the basis of words like pediatrics and pedagogue.

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.

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Democracy (n)

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Again, if this context clues worksheet on the noun democracy isn’t timely, particularly in light of the president’s latest craziness, than I guess I don’t, after all, understand the use of timely as an adjective. For the record, I learned, after consulting my dictionary, that timely means, in one sense “appropriate or adapted to the times or occasion.”

So yeah, I stand by this document as timely at this moment in history.

And as long I as I am presuming to write things into the record, please remember that United States presidents do not have absolute power–in fact, no one in the government does. That’s why we have a separation of powers in our Constitution. At the risk of belaboring the point, let’s not forget that the founders of this country fought a revolutionary war against a British sovereign who liked to think of himself as possessing absolute power.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Jargon

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

If there is a better moment to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on jargon, I don’t know when it would be. And thanks (!) to all the medical and health sciences professionals who have familiarized the public on the jargon it uses to discuss viruses and their spread; you’ve made this pandemic, to the greatest extent possible, less abstruse and frightening to this member of the public.

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.

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Sugar

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on sugar, certainly a cornerstone of my own nutrition-free diet, and its accompanying 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.

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A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Vineyard Gothic”

Posted on April 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Vineyard Gothic.”

I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the metaphor “gilded cage.” You’ll need this PDF of the illustrations and questions of this case to conduct your investigation. Finally, as always, here is the typescript of the answer key to solve the case.

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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Term of Art: Alliteration

Posted on April 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Alliteration (noun) Recurrence of stressed sounds in words near one another, usually of initial consonants. Adj. alliterative; adv. Alliteratively; v. alliterate.

‘Even a writer who doesn’t, as Chandler usually did, clean as he goes, would normally liquidate so languorous an alliterative lullaby long before the final draft.'”

Clive James, First Reactions

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

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Independent Practice: Samurai

Posted on April 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK: here is an independent practice worksheet on samurai. This material is fundamental to understanding feudal Japan, as well as one of the greatest films of all time, Akira Kurosawa’s masterful (I was going to say masterpiece, but Kurosawa produced many masterpieces) Seven Samurai.

If you’ve seen The Magnificent Seven, than you’ve seen Seven Samurai–though arguably a lesser version of 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.

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Word Root Exercise: Ped, Pedi and -Pede

Posted on April 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word roots ped pedi and pede. These roots in Latin mean simply foot and feet and give use words in English like pedestrian and pedicure. Needless to say, this is a very productive root in English

Please take care not to confuse these Latin roots with the Greek root ped: in Greek, this root, also very productive in English gives us words like pediatrics and pedagogy. I have a worksheet on the Greek root as well, and will publish it in the next couple of days.

Aside: is there a lesson in comparative linguistics here? If the foot is the base of the human body, can childhood be the base of human life? This is a thought I’ve gotten stuck on a time or two. What do you think?

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.

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