Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Rembrandt

Over the holiday break, I read Ulrich Boser’s fascinating account of the robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. One of the paintings that disappeared on that March night was Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, his only seascape and apparently, in the eyes of many art historians, a representative example of chiaroscuro.

Here’s a reading on Rembrandt with a vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet to accompany 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.

Resolve (vi/vt), Resolution (n)

Here are two context clues worksheets on the verb resolve (it’s used both intransitively and transitively) and the noun resolution.

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.

The Weekly Text, December 20, 2019: A Lesson Plan on the Demonstrative Adjective

Tomorrow is the winter solstice; the day sure seems to come up fast this year. After tomorrow, the days will begin to lengthen, which means warmer weather and more light is on the way. And who doesn’t want that? I like a few deep, dark winter nights, but a little, in the end, goes a long way.

This week’s Text, the last of 2019, is a lesson plan on the demonstrative adjective. I open this lesson with this Everyday Edit on worksheet on “Edison’s First Movie Set” (and if you and your students like working with Everyday Edit worksheets, the good folks at Education World give away a year’s supply of them under that hyperlink). If the lesson runs into a second day, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on slang. Finally, here is the scaffolded worksheet on the demonstrative adjectives that is the gravamen of this unit.

That’s it. Happy Hanukkah, Happy, Kwanzaa, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I’ll be back on Friday, January 3 with the first Weekly Text for 2020.

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.

Gregor Mendel

Science teachers, can you use this reading on Gregor Mendel 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.

Word Root Exercise: Scrib, Script

As I prepare to post this worksheet on the Latin word roots scrib and script–they mean, which you’ve already determined, to write–it occurs to me that I have a full lesson plan somewhere to go with this document. Stay tuned, I guess…

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.

Term of Art: Apercu

Apercu (AA PER SUE): The term would be used by an analyst in a structure such as ‘The writer here presents, as apercu, that women, on the average, are shorter than men.’ That is to say, the comment is that the writer does not present her statement merely as an observation, but instead as if it were an insight, as if it were a particularly astute perception. ‘And then it came to me, women are shorter than men.” This example is deliberately unsubtle because what I mean to stress is that to describe a presentation as apercu is to talk about the manner of presentation rather than to make a comment on the actual ‘insightfulness’ of the comment itself. Like objectivity, apercu describes a rhetorical pose rather than confers a positive evaluation. See also EPIPHANY.

A second meaning of apercu is as a name for a summary, outline, or synopsis.

Excerpted from: Trail, George Y. Rhetorical Terms and Concepts: A Contemporary Glossary. New York: Harcourt Brace, 2000.

Cultural Literacy: Short-Term Memory

Moving right along on this frigid morning (two degrees when I left my building at 6:03 a.m.), here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on short-term memory.

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.

Industry (n)

Let me end the day by posting this context clues worksheet on the noun industry, which students really need to know to understand, at the very least, the social studies curriculum. But there is also the figurative use, which might be handy in a locution like “You are a portrait of industry today,” addressed to your loved one who is making you holiday cookies.

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.

Descent (n), Dissent (vi/n)

This set of five homophone worksheets builds vocabulary and helps students differentiate between the noun descent, and dissent, which is used both as a verb (intransitively only, apparently) and a noun.

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.

Godfrey of Bouillon

Here is a reading on the crusader Godfrey of Bouillon and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies 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.