Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Cultural Literacy: Burn the Midnight Oil

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.

Daniel Willingham on Sound and Meaning

“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.

Foray (n)

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.

Graphic Novels

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.

Independent Practice: Copernicus

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.

A Learning Support on Pronouns and Case

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.

Sleuth (vt/vi)

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.

Smoking

If you’re looking for a short text on smoking that doesn’t in any way equivocate, than this short reading on that deadly habit should be more than adequate; here is the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet than 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.

Cultural Literacy: Burn the Candle at Both Ends

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “to burn the candle at both ends.” It remains in sufficiently common usage in English, I think, that it might be worth taking the five or so minutes required to complete this short exercise to familiarize students with 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.

Adjudicate (vt/vi)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb adjudicate, which is used both transitively, and intransitively. It seems like a word that could usefully find its way into the lexicons of teenagers–especially those already looking down the road at law school.

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.