Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Cultural Literacy: Amortization

Here’s one more thing on this Tuesday afternoon, to wit a Cultural Literacy worksheet on amortization. Nota bene the Latin root mort in this word: it means death and also shows up in words like mortal and mortuary. This noun, coming from the verb amortize, which Merriam-Webster’s defines as meaning both to pay off (as a mortgage) gradually usu. by periodic payments of principal and interest or by payments to a sinking fund and to gradually reduce or write off the cost or value of (as an asset) can mean, given the presence of mort in it, to kill off a debt. Students might find that interesting. In any case, amortize does show up in the word root worksheet I have for mort, which I will post at some point.

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: Furnish

Furnish for Provide, of Supply. ‘Taxation furnished the money.’ A pauper may furnish a house if someone will provide the furniture, or the money to buy it. ‘His flight furnishes a presumption of guilt.’ It supplies it.”

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

Louisiana Purchase

Here is a short reading on the Louisiana Purchase and comprehension worksheet to accompany it. This is from the Intellectual Devotional series and can be easily modified for students along a broad continuum of literacy.

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: The Roman Empire

Here, on Sunday afternoon, is an independent practice worksheet on the Roman Empire. It may well need to be pared down some, but it’s in Word, so you can do as you (or more importantly, your students) need 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.

The Weekly Text, October 19, 2018: A Lesson Plan on Commonly Used Prepositions

Things have been very hectic at Mark’s Text Terminal lately as I prepare to move this entire operation to Massachusetts. Still, the Weekly Text is a mainstay here; even during this transition, I will at the very least post something every Friday.

For this week’s Text, I offer a complete lesson plan on commonly used prepositions. This is from the sixth of my units on the parts of speech; by this time, students have become relatively proficient users of language, so I begin increasingly using, as the do-now exercises with which I begin lessons, Everyday Edit worksheets, which the good people at Education World give away on their site. For this lesson I use this Everyday Edit on Anne Sullivan, the extraordinary pedagogue who educated Helen Keller. If this lesson goes into a second day, here is another Everyday Edit on James Forten, Free Black Man.

The mainstay of this lesson is this scaffolded worksheet on commonly used prepositions. The worksheet requires for its completion this learning support on commonly used prepositions. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the 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.

Artifice (n)

I haven’t had occasion to use this context clues worksheet on the noun artifice. But I wrote it in anticipation, a few years ago, of teaching some advanced English Language Arts classes. They never materialized. Anyway, it seems to me a word high school students ought to know, particularly when reading drama, fiction, and poetry.

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.

Arbitration (n)

Now seems like as good a time as any to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on arbitration. I do understand that this might be a dying art and practice: now when humans have conflicts, they take to Twitter or Facebook and excoriate their adversaries.

You know, kind of like the culture of high 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.

Cultural Literacy: Aristocracy

OK. here on a Sunday afternoon is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on aristocracy. By the strict definition of Hispanic Heritage Month, it’s another stretch. On the other hand, students need to understand the concept of aristocracy to understand land distribution across the Latin American world and its consequence, poverty.

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: Sparta

Here’s an independent practice worksheet on Sparta. It’s a short exercise intended to follow a class on the Greek city-state.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Equ/Equi

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word roots equ and equi. As you no doubt recognize, as, let’s hope, your student do as well, these two roots simply mean equal. These roots produce a variety of words that are used across learned disciplines, but especially in quantitative sciences and geography.

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.