Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

A Lesson Plan on Alcohol

Here’s a lesson plan on alcohol. This short reading and this vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet comprise the work for this unit. If you’d like a slightly longer, and therefore more in-depth, set of these documents, click here and you’ll get to them.

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: Ad Hominem

“Ad Hominem To the man: appealing to the sentiments or prejudices of the hearer of listener rather than to his or her reason or intelligence; disparaging a person’s character rather than his or her sentiments; personal rather than substantive or ideological.

‘The boss knows all about the so-called fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem. ‘It may be a fallacy,’ he said, ‘ but it is shore-God useful. If you use the right kind of argumentum, you can always scare the hominem into a laundry bill he didn’t expect.’ Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men.”

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

Avid (adj)

OK, here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective avid, which is in common enough use in English that students should know it before they graduate high school.

Just sayin’.

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: Phor, Phore

It turns out to be a complicated piece of language, but here, nonetheless, is a worksheet on the Greek roots phor and phore. These mean, variously, to bear, to produce, to carry, and state. As you’ll see from the English words that grow from this root, it basically divides its labors between the concrete and the abstract in language.

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.

Afflict (vt), Affliction (n)

Here are two context clues worksheets on the verb afflict and the noun affliction. The verb is only used transitively. I’m hard pressed to imagine why these aren’t two words students should know by the time they graduate high school.

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.

Leonardo Pisano AKA Fibonacci

OK, math teachers, here is a reading on Fibonacci 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.

Cultural Literacy: White Elephant

Here’s a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “white elephant” if you think you’re students need to know the concept. With Tag Sale Season fast approaching in Vermont, this might be a useful piece of vocabulary for kids in this part of 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.

Soar (vi) and Sore (adj)

Here are five worksheets on the homophones soar and sore.

Soar is an intransitive verb, though it also has use as a noun, meaning “the range, distance, or height attained in soaring” and “the act of soaring: upward flight.” The noun isn’t tagged as archaic in Merriam-Webster’s; I don’t know about you, but I’ve never used soar as a noun.

Sore, of course, is an adjective, and it’s how you feel after an injury or other trauma, or after intense exercise.

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 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Here is a lesson plan on post-traumatic stress disorder along with the short reading and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that comprise the work of this lesson. If you’d like a slightly longer version of the reading and worksheet, you can find that 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.

Word Root Exercise: Radic, Radix

If you can use it, here is a worksheet on the Latin roots radic and radix. They mean root. I imagine teachers in both mathematics and the hard sciences recognize these roots. They are at the base of terms of art in your domains such as radical as well as some big words related to neuropathic disease.

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.