Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Common Errors in English Usage: Adopted and Adoptive

Here is an English usage worksheet on the adjectives adopted and adoptive and differentiating their use.

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.

The Milgram Studies: Lessons in Obedience

While I have found Stanley Milgram’s studies on obedience to authority fascinating (and the “lost letter experiment” is also interesting), I do understand that it isn’t exactly high school material. That said, I did, in 17 years of teaching now, have one kid ask about Milgram. Furthermore, I am aware that many of Milgram’s contemporaries and colleagues expressed serious ethical qualms about the methods Milgram used.

Nonetheless, here is a short reading on Dr. Milgram’s study 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.

Write It Right: Anticipate for Expect.

“Anticipate for Expect. ‘I anticipate trouble.” To anticipate is to act on an expectation in a way to promote or forestall the event expected.”

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

Combatant (n)

Because it comes up consistently in social studies classes, I wrote this context clues worksheet on the noun combatant to help students master the meaning and use of this commonly used noun. This is a particularly good–and necessary–word for kids in social studies classes to know.

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.

Independent Practice: The Columbian Exchange

On a rainy Monday morning, here is an independent practice worksheet on the Columbian Exchange.

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.

Everyday Edit: Kwanzaa

Alright, it’s soon time for me to leave. Here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on Kwanzaa. If you like using Everyday Edits in your classroom then you are in luck: Education World will give you a yearlong supply of them on a broad range of topics.

If you find typos in this document, fix them! It’s an Everyday Edit!

Cultural Literacy: James Baldwin

His premature death robbed the world of a keen, compassionate intellect. Since reading The Fire Next Time in my early twenties, my eyes have been wide open to his genius. If you want to know more about James Baldwin, I cannot recommend highly or often enough Raoul Peck’s magisterial documentary “I Am Not Your Negro.”

So, this Cultural Literacy worksheet on James Baldwin does not do the man justice, but it might serve as an introduction to him for your students.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Endo-

OK, health care professions students, here is a worksheet on the Greek root endo-, which means, simply, inside. That’s why endocrinologists deal with those glands buried deep inside your body. This is, of course, another of those roots that produces a lot of words related to health care, so if you have students looking at careers in that profession, here’s another Greek root they should probably know.

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.

Daniel Willingham on Grammar and Reading Comprehension

“What type of apples did you buy?

They are cooking apples.

What are those people doing in the kitchen?

They are cooking apples.

This example may seem unusual, but many, if not most, sentences have more than one grammatically correct interpretation. A classic example is “Time flies like an arrow.” Most people interpret it metaphorically—time moves quickly, as an arrow does. But it could also mean that a particular type or insect (time flies) feel affection for arrows. Or “time” could be a command, with the sentence meaning I want you to assess the pace of those flies, and I want you to do it in the way you would assess the pace of an arrow. There are actually at least two other grammatically acceptable interpretations of this sentence.

Grammatically acceptable, but not acceptable to common sense. There’s not a variety of flies called “time flies.” And who would tell someone to get out their stopwatch and time some flies in the same way they would time an arrow? Who times files or arrows? Just as in the “eating apples” example, readers bring knowledge to bear on the sentence, not just grammar, to arrive at the correct interpretation. But in those examples, the knowledge is not provided in the text. The reader had to know it before reading the text.

The influence of meaning on the processing of a sentence is most obvious when grammar renders the sentences ambiguous, but meaning also has an impact on the speed and ease of processing even if the grammar is ambiguous. For example, the sentence “I cut up a slice of cooked ham” will be read more slowly when it is preceded by a few sentences describing the protagonist getting dressed, compared to a context where the protagonist was described as in a kitchen. That slowing can be avoided by adding one word at the start of the sentence: “Later, I cut up a slice of cooked ham.” So clearly, we’re not just extracting meaning from sentences, we are coordinating the meaning of sentences with the meaning of what we’ve read before, and we’re doing that as we process each sentence.”

Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel T. The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.

A Lesson Plan on Intelligence

Here is a lesson plan on intelligence. You’ll need this short reading and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. If you’d like slightly longer versions of these documents, click here.

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.