Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Cultural Literacy: Beowulf

Happy New Year! Here, for the first blog post of the New Year, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Beowulf.

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.

Sitting Bull

For the penultimate blog post of 2018, here is a reading on Sioux warrior and chieftain Sitting Bull along with the 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.

Write it Right: Ovation

Ovation. In ancient Rome an ovation was an inferior triumph accorded to victors in minor wars or unimportant battle. Its character and limitations, like those of the triumph, were strictly defined by law and custom. An enthusiastic demonstration in honor of an American civilian is nothing like that, and should not be called by its name.”

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

Haggard (adj)

I don’t know if it’s a word high school students need to know, but if you think it is, here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective haggard. I don’t know that I’ve ever used this (it was a Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster, and writing context clues worksheets on those has become my version of doing a crossword puzzle in the morning), but certainly this word is in sufficiently common use in English that it’s at least worth having students take a quick look at it.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Have an Ax to Grind

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Have an ax to grind.” This seems like a term that users of social media ought to have at their disposal–you know? But this is also a term used often in educated and even scholarly discourse to describe tendentiousness in inquiry.

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 Battle of Tours-Poitiers

You know, despite the fact that it is a turning point in global history, I can’t even remember why I wrote this independent practice worksheet on the Battle of Tours-Poitiers. In the freshman global studies classes I co-taught in New York, I don’t recall ever–aside from a cursory mention of Charles Martel somewhere in the mix–covering this explicitly.

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.

Prohibition

Lately, I’ve worked to create a broad spectrum literacy course that will appeal to or reach as many students as possible. This reading on Prohibition and the comprehension worksheet are part of this endeavor.

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: Ax-grinder

A carefully worded editorial that is seemingly objective but in fact is purposive and slanted; publicist or flack; one deemed too preoccupied with a given issue.”

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

Word Root Exercise: Hydro-

You might find that this worksheet on the Greek word root hydr/o–it means, unsurprisingly, water, but also hydrogen and liquid–helps students quickly build a lexicon of key vocabulary words to use across the common branch domains, and especially the physical sciences.

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.

A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Fragment”

Here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Fragment.” Suffice it to say that this is the first of many of these.

I’ve put up a couple of these before, and traffic to them is consistent. For this one, here is the Cultural Literacy do-now exercise on the idiom “An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure.” From the book itself, here is a PDF of the illustration of the evidence with the questions students will consider in analysis and contemplation as they resolve the crime. Finally, here is teacher’s answer key to this case.

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.