Here is a worksheet on the verb promise as used with an infinitive. I promise to stop thinking I am clever by devising dubious curricular material such as this.
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.
In this age of super-duper video games, I doubt there would be much call for this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Three Musketeers. In middle school, I loved the swashbucklers, but it doesn’t appear they are much read anymore. I suppose, if nothing else, this half-page document with its three-sentence reading and three comprehension question might play a role in some sort of instruction in literary history, especially where Dumas is concerned.
And it seems to me that most people in the world would benefit from dedicating some thought to the Three Musketeers’ motto: “All for one and one for all.”
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.
“Commonplace (noun): An obvious or trite comment or opinion; routine, unremarkable observation.
‘When he first noticed me, he tried to flummox me by addressing me in Latin, but I was equal to that dodge, and after a few commonplaces, we changed to English.’ Robertson Davies, Fifth Business”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Latin word roots quadr, quadri, quadru, and quadra. They mean, of course, four, and they are at the roots of high school words like quadratic (equation) and more general purpose English words like quadrangle and quadrant.
I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the verb quarter. I’m not sure why I chose the verb, as it has nothing to do with the meaning of the root on this worksheet, but rather means, in the context supplied, “to provide with lodging or shelter.” The verb also means “to cut or divide into four equal or nearly equal parts,” and I think this document would probably best be rewritten to furnish that context for inferring this word’s meaning.
Unless of course you’re teaching a lesson on the Third Amendment to the United States Constitution,, i.e. “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” In that case, the above-linked context clues worksheet may have some utility for you.
Finally, here is the scaffolded worksheet that is the primary work of this lesson.
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.
Here is a worksheet on the verb pretend as used with an infinitive. I pretend to believe that this document has pedagogical merit or use.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the adjective and preposition vis-a-vis. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one sentence and two questions. One of the questions calls for the composition of a sentence using vis-a-vis, so it could be easily eliminated if you just to introduce the use of this term in the vernacular–that is, to mean “in relation to.” I will say that this worksheet does little more than that, which I discovered when I researched the word a bit at Merriam-Webster. This Gallicism literally means “face-to-face” and can be used that way as a noun, should you care to extend this worksheet further.
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.
Happy New Year!
This week’s Text is this reading on the California Gold Rush with its accompanying vocabulary-building, comprehension and analysis worksheet. These materials are adapted from the Intellectual Devotional series; for more on these materials at Mark’s Text Terminal, please see the About Posts & Texts page, accessible through the links on the banner of the home page (right above the photograph).
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.
During the pandemic, I acquired (and fortunately discarded relatively quickly) the unfortunate habit of writing down the Word of the Day from Merriam-Webster (it appeared on my phone as a notification until I had the good sense to put a stop to it) for future development into context clues worksheets. I have finally finished developing these materials and will begin now to post them on this blog.
This worksheet on the noun verdigris is one of the fruits of this dubious enterprise. The word means “a green or bluish deposit especially of copper carbonates formed on copper, brass, or bronze surfaces.” You know–like on the Statue of Liberty. I doubt very much that this is a word–despite its charms–that high school students need to know. On the other hand, after my maternal grandfather taught me the word one evening while we stood before the verdigris-covered statue of a seated Abraham Lincoln on Bascom Hill at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I have been pleased to be able to use the word to understand the phenomenon.
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.
Here, in the final documents post of 2023, is a worksheet on the verb prepare as used with an infinitive. I prepared to jettison a wide array of useless curricular materials.
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.
“Contraction (noun): The shortening of word or phrase by omitting a letter or letters, especially within the word, and a curtailment reflected in its pronunciation; an internally truncated word or phrase, with the omitted letter or letters usually indicated by an apostrophe. Adjective: contractional, contractive; Verb: contract.
‘The word that excited Swift to greatest fury was mob, a vulgar contraction of mobile vulgus.’ Ernest Gowers, Plain Words.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
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