Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Ibn Rushd

Here is a reading on Ibn Rushd, also known as Averroes: he was a Muslim philosopher who commented extensively on Aristotle. He is prominently featured in Raphael’s famous painting The School of Athens. This reading comprehension worksheet accompanies the reading.

See above for related materials.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Necro

Here is a worksheet on the Greek word root necro. It means dead and death. Necropolis is an old-fashioned word for cemetery.

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.

Nadir (n)

While I realize it is not word in particularly common use (not to mention students in secondary schools one hopes, not experienced the concept in their own lives yet), I think there is nonetheless the place in the high school classroom for this context clues worksheet on the noun nadir.

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.

Bare (adj), Bear (n), and Bear (vt/vi)

Here are five worksheets on the homophones bare and bear. They’re short, and therefore, in my classroom, useful for a number of purposes, most commonly to begin an instructional period after a class transition.

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.

Heckle (vt)

If a teacher maintains a healthy sense of humor about him- or herself, I would argue, he or she will find him- or herself as the butt of students’ jokes, which may even manifest itself in classroom banter. Put another way, and more subjectively, my students and I have had a few laughs at my expense on more than one occasion.

Students should possess the vocabulary to describe this badinage, hence the arrival of this context clues worksheet on the transitive verb heckle, which doesn’t exactly describe this classroom situation; that said, it gives teacher and students an opportunity to discuss the difference between heckling and banter.

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: The Dreyfus Affair

Last year, for the first time, I taught sophomore global studies in an integrated co-teaching (ICT) classroom here in New York City. This cycle of social studies instruction covers the period, roughly, from the beginning of the Enlightenment to the present day. In this maelstrom, I found it a bit odd that the curriculum didn’t at least touch on The Dreyfus Affair, if for no other reason its role as a precursor to the anti-Semitic horrors of the twentieth century.

Superficial though it may be, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Dreyfus Affair. It is a modest attempt to rectify what I consider to be a significant gap in the New York State sophomore global studies curriculum.

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.

Beginnings of the Civil War

If you teach United States History, than you might find useful this reading on the beginnings of the Civil War as well as the reading comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. It serves any number of purposes which will be contingent, ideally, on the student to whom it is assigned.

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

Jocular (adj)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective jocular. While not a word in particularly common usage these days, it is a good word to know nonetheless.

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.

Anagram

“The rearrangement of the letters in a word or phrase to make another word or phrase. Anagrams are a common feature of crossword puzzles and are sometimes used by authors to conceal proper names. Drab is an anagram of bard; the name of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) is an anagram of nowhere.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Mainstay (n)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun mainstay. It’s a commonly used word, maybe even a mainstay of the English language. But very, very few of my students over the years have known it; they should.

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.