Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

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.

Learning Support: The Possessive Singular of Nouns

“Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding ‘s.

Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

Charles’s friend

Burns’s Poems

The witch’s malice

Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names ending in –es and ‘is, the possessive Jesus’, and such forms as for conscience’ sake, for righteousness sake. But such forms as Moses’ Laws, Isis’ temple are commonly replaced by

The laws of Moses

The temple of Isis

The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours and ours have no apostrophe. Indefinite pronouns, however, use the apostrophe to show possession.

One’s rights

Somebody else’s umbrella

A common error is to write it’s for its, or vice versa. The second is possessive.

It’s a wise dog that scratches its own fleas.”

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

John Gotti

Over the time I’ve offered them, I’ve found this reading on John Gotti and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet to be relatively high-interest material among the students I serve.

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.

Address (n), (n), (vt)

Here are three context clues worksheets on address: two as a noun, and one as a verb. The verb is apparently used only transitively, its intransitive form having fallen into such disuse that it is marked “archaic” in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th Edition).

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: Proposition for Proposal

“Proposition for Proposal. ‘He made a proposition.” In current slang almost anything is a proposition. A difficult enterprise is a ‘tough proposition,’ an agile wrestler, ‘a slippery proposition,’ and so forth.”

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

Cultural Literacy: Voodoo

Given the fascination with zombies in our culture, I would think this Cultural Literacy worksheet on voodoo ought to be of some interest to kids.

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.