Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Learning Support: The Verb To Be Conjugated

While I’m pretty sure I’ve somewhere on this site posted another version of this document, here, nonetheless, is a learning support on the verb to be. It’s a conjugation table that separates the verb into its parts.

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: Academic Freedom

I know I’ve beaten this trope to death lately, which doesn’t make it any less true that our current zeitgeist offers the perfect time to post something like this Cultural Literacy worksheet on academic freedom.

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.

Behest (n)

Here’s a first on Mark’s Text Terminal: on the same day it is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day, I offer you this context clues worksheet on the noun behest.

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: Copulative

“Copulative: Indicating linking or predication of words, phrases or clauses, e.g., the verb ‘is.’”

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

A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “End of a Villain”

OK, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “End of a Villain.”

I use this cultural literacy worksheet on the American idiom “Once in a Blue Moon” to begin this lesson after the class change that brings students into my classroom. Here, from a Crime and Puzzlement book itself, are the illustration, text, and questions that drive this lesson. Finally, here is the answer key for the 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.

The Problem of Evil

This seems like as good (or the best) a time as any to post this short reading on the problem of evil and vocabulary building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. This has tended to be high-interest material for the students I’ve served in my career, particularly high school juniors and seniors.

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.

Gratify

Here’s a context clues worksheet on the verb gratify, which is apparently only used transitively. This is a word students should know–it’s that simple.

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: Wounded Knee

Here is a Cultural Literacy exercise on Wounded Knee and the tragic events that occurred there. It is short, so it serves only as an introduction to the subject, which absolutely warrants greater scrutiny and analysis.

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: Charlemagne

At the start of another work week, here is an independent practice worksheet on Charlemagne. I’m hard pressed to imagine he isn’t a part of most if not all world history or global studies (or whatever your district of school calls this area of 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.

Write It Right: Conclude for Decide

Conclude for Decide: “‘I concluded to go to town.’ Having concluded a course of reasoning (implied) I decided to go to town. A decision is supposed to be made at the conclusion of a course of reasoning, but it is not the conclusion itself. Conversely, the conclusion of a syllogism is not a decision, but an inference.”

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