Tag Archives: health

Word Root Exercise: Cerebro

OK, moving right along this morning, here is a worksheet on the Latin word root cerebro. It means, I expect you’ve gathered by now, brain. Most of the words that grow from this root–it’s very productive in English–denote brain but also connote mind and intellect. But again, you probably already know that.

Like many Greek roots on this blog, this Latin root will be useful, indeed necessary, for students interested in the healthcare professions.

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: Repetition Compulsion

“Repetition compulsion: In psychoanalysis, a type of compulsion characterized by a tendency to place oneself in dangerous or distressing situations that repeat similar experiences from the past. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) introduced in 1914 in an article on ‘Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through’ (Standard Edition, XII, pp. 147-56) and discussed it at length in his book Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). In analysis, the transference often contains elements that involve recreations of past conflicts with parents and other family members. Also called a compulsion to repeat.”

Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Word Root Exercise: Mania

You’ll find it in a number of very commonly used words in the English language, so here is a worksheet on the Greek word root mania, which means excessive desire and mental aberration. For any students interested in psychology or work in the health care professions, understanding of this root is de rigueur; but, again, this is such a productive root in English that all students really ought to know 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.

Term of Art: Schema

“Schema: A plan, diagram, or outline, especially a mental representation of some aspect of experience, based on prior experience and memory, structured in such a way as to facilitate (and sometimes to distort) perception, cognition, the drawing of inferences, or the interpretation of new information in terms of existing knowledge. The term was first used in a psychological sense by the English neurologist Sir Henry Head (1861-1940), who restricted its meaning to a person’s internal body image, and it was given its modern meaning by the English psychologist Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett (1886-1969) in his book Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology [1932, p. 199] to account for the observation that errors in the recall of stories tend to make them more conventional, which Bartlett attributed to the assimilation of the stories to a pre-existing schemata. The concept of a frame, introduced in 1975 by the US cognitive scientist Marvin (Lee) Minsky (1927-2016), is essentially a schema formalized in artificial intelligence. A script is a schema of an event sequence.”

[From Greek schema a form, from echein to have]”

Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003

Personal Identity

Let me start with the documents, to wit this reading on personal identity and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The more I think about the conceptual and personal issues attached to personal identity, and how self-identifying has empowered oppressed communities, the more I think I would like to build either a short unit or a long lesson around these documents. If that interests you, please read on.

It’s one of those big philosophical and psychological concepts, but in the realm of the classroom teacher, individuation means that students have begun the process of discovering the self, or themselves, if you prefer. In any case, identity is important. To whatever extent we can, I think we are intellectually and morally obliged to abet this process in kids.

Especially now, when social media appear, as an emerging scholarly discourse indicates, to erode individuation. If you’re interested, this stylish and literate blog post from The Literary Blues supplies a nice basic outline of the means by which social media diminishes individualism. A lesson or unit on personal identity would proceed most effectively, I submit, if it addressed these critical issues of identity and social media.

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.

Term of Art: Acute Stress Disorder

“acute stress disorder: A transient anxiety disorder following exposure to a traumatic event, with a similar pattern of symptoms to post-traumatic stress disorder plus symptoms of disassociation (such as dissociative amnesia, depersonalization, derealization) but occurring within four weeks of the traumatic event. If the symptoms persist beyond four weeks, then a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder may be considered.

[From the Latin acutus sharpened, from acuere, to sharpen, from acus a needle]”

Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Circadian Rhythms

For just over ten years, I served in a school without windows in any of the classrooms. In fact, that school has been in the news recently for deficiencies in its reopening plan.

Students, as they will (and I thank them for it), often questioned and commented about the building–it really was dismal–and wanted to discuss it at times. I used this reading on circadian rhythms and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet as a way of capitalizing on students’ desire to know why their school possessed the architectural charm of a maximum security prison.

In any case, the reading doesn’t necessarily answer any questions. It does present opportunities to ask critical questions about allocation of public resources, investment in communities, and whether or not one needs to see daylight to operate on a circadian cycle.

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: Epidemic

The other day, I set aside a group of Cultural Literacy worksheets that I think are timely, and arguably ought to be in front of students–or at least something like them that present important concepts that might inform thinking about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in this difficult time.

Ergo, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of an epidemic. And that’s 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.

X-Rays

Years ago, when I worked in a school that had a cooperative career and technical education (CTE) program, I served students either in such a program or on their way to one. I developed this reading on x-rays and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet for students interested in becoming x-ray technicians.

Then I never used it. For one thing, it is highly technical with a lot of relatively advanced scientific vocabulary. As the years went by the CTE program slipped away, and any modifications I might have performed to make this material more readable while making it more comprehensive went with the program.

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.

A Lesson Plan on the Order of Tooth Arrival and Growth from The Order of Things

From Barbara Ann Kipfer’s The Order of Things, here is a lesson plan on the arrival and growth of teeth. You’ll need the reading with comprehension questions to complete this short reading and writing exercise, which, like all 50 of these lessons that I will eventually post here, is intended to help struggling learners experience mastery and therefore build self-confidence and competence in school.

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.