Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Looney Tunes

Posted on January 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

Their characters are American icons at this point, and people (well, at least I do) still watch them, so here is a reading on Looney Tunes and its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. For some reason, it still surprises me that this particular reading is of very high interest to students. In the ten years I’ve used this material in the classroom, kids regularly ask for 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.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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Palate (n), Palette (n), and Pallet (n)

Posted on January 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

I’m not sure how fine any teacher wants to parse out vocabulary instructions, or what that same teacher considers an adequate high school lexicon. If your instructional plans call for sorting out the myriad homonyms in the English language, and you want to assist your students in building their own broad vocabularies, then these five worksheets on the nouns palate, palette, and pallet  may be of some utility to you.

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.

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Word Root Exercise: Circum-

Posted on January 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word root circum. It means, unsurprisingly, around. This root is at the base of at least two key words–circumference and circumstance–from the high school lexicon. Moreover, because it derives from the Latin, it forms the basis of a number of cognates in the Romance languages, particularly Spanish.

-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.

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Cultural Literacy: Burn the Midnight Oil

Posted on January 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

As students head off to college, teachers probably should explain to them the cognitive science research on “cramming” as a method of studying, i.e. that it is basically useless and mostly exhausting. Perhaps this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom burn the midnight oil would serve as an elegant way to kill two birds with one stone: teach students a new idiomatic expression, and urge them to pace themselves when studying.

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.

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Daniel Willingham on Sound and Meaning

Posted on January 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Writing is a code for what you say, not what you think. All known writing systems code the sound of spoken language.

So, on the first day of school, before any reading instruction has begun, every child in the class has bicameral mental representations of words: the know the sound of a word (which scientists called phonology), and its meaning (which scientists call semantics).”

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

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Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference

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Foray (n)

Posted on January 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

Last weekend it was one of Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Day, so here is a context clues worksheet on the noun foray. The word is in common enough usage, and more importantly is a word that, for an abstraction, has strong concrete properties. It is in common enough usage that it’s a word students ought to know by the time they graduate high school, I submit.

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.

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Graphic Novels

Posted on January 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

OK, moving right along, here are a reading on graphic novels and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Kids in my classrooms over the years have always asked for these documents, so I think based on my experience with them, I’ll designate this high interest material.

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.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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Independent Practice: Copernicus

Posted on January 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

While I understand that an essential element of adolescence is thinking one is the center of the universe, I hold that this independent practice worksheet on Copernicus possesses utility in both the middle and high school classroom–if only to remind teenagers that the sun, not they, stands at the center of our universe. Also, Copernicus is a key figure in the history of science.

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.

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Posted in Essays/Readings, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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A Learning Support on Pronouns and Case

Posted on January 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

While I’ve posted it elsewhere as part of a lesson plan, I’ll publish this learning support on pronouns and case as a stand-alone post so it is easily searchable.

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.

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Sleuth (vt/vi)

Posted on January 28, 2019 | Leave a comment

OK, I’m on a break between professional development session. Because it is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, here is a context clues worksheet on sleuth as a verb, which is used both transitively and intransitively.

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.

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