Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

A Lesson Plan on Historic Ages and Eras from The Order of Things

From the pages of Barbara Ann Kipfer’s The Order of Things, here is a lesson plan on historic ages and eras along with its reading and comprehension worksheet. As I note in the “About Posts & Texts” page, these worksheets are something I began developing this year as short exercises to take advantage of teachable moments and to help students develop an understanding of working with two symbolic systems (i.e. words and numbers) at the same time.

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.

Homosexuality

When I started working with troubled adolescents in 1990, I was surprised to see that the the clinical professionals with whom I worked, tread very lightly, if at all, around the issue of sexual identity in the kids we saw. In fact, on the only occasion I saw it addressed directly, one of the more highly placed professionals in the program angrily denied that it was a precipitant to or a factor in other clinical issues.

I’m not qualified to speak deeply about clinical pathology, but at the same time I knew that gay kids coming of age in a deeply homophobic society faced challenges that I clearly hadn’t experience and therefore didn’t understand. I did know that gay kids suffered a very high rate of suicidality.

Things have changed, fortunately. Here is a reading on homosexuality along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This has, along the way in my time as a teacher, become a high-interest item, so I have tagged it as such.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Sphere

OK: finally, on this rainy April morning, here is a worksheet on the Greek word root sphere. It means ball. I’ll assume I needn’t belabor the point that students should know this root, which is also, per se, a noun in the English language as well as combining to make a variety of nouns in the sciences and mathematics.

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.

A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “The Awesome Treasure”

Because they are, so to speak, flying off the shelf, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “The Awesome Treasure.”

I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Any Port in a Storm.” This scan of the illustration and questions drives the case; this typescript of the answer key helps you solve 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.

Braggadocio

“Braggadocio (noun): Bumptious bragging or self-inflation; boastful language. Adj. braggadocian.

‘…the fancy lingoes of psychiatry, pedagogy, welfare, and big business—these are the twentieth century equivalents of ‘tall talk,’ sharing in the windiness of the nineteenth-century variety, but unlike it, incredibly dull and vapid. The hyperbole, grotesquery, and braggadocio survive only in American slang.’ Thomas Pyles, Words and Ways of American English“

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

Cultural Literacy: Enfant Terrible

I can think of no better time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the term and concept enfant terrible, since we seem to have so many of them at the moment in our culture and society.

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.

Delegate (n/vi/vt)

Here are a pair of worksheets on delegate as a noun and a verb. As a verb it is used both intransitively and transitively–and the stress shifts to the penultimate vowel a–as in delegate, like the thing you walk through to enter a zoo or park.

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.

Everyday Edit: Japan’s “Coming of Age Day”

Here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on Japan’s “Coming of Age Day.” If you like these worksheets then you are in luck! The generous people at Education World give away a yearlong supply of them, and if you dig a little deeper over there, you’ll find the answer keys as well.

Independent Practice: Indus Civilization

In the ongoing observation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2020, here is an independent practice worksheet on Indus Civilization. This was key material in the global studies curriculum in New York City; it is integral, I would think, to understanding the rise of civilizations in river valleys around the world.

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.

Lucky Luciano

Here is a relatively high-interest reading on Lucky Luciano along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As I say tirelessly–and probably tiresomely as well–this material is in Microsoft Word so there is plenty of room to expand, contract, or otherwise manipulate it for your needs.

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.