“What is the riddle of the Sphinx? What animal walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three at night?” the sphinx asks Oedipus, the hero of Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex (426 B.C.). Oedipus answers that it is man (crawling as an infant, walking erect as an adult, and walking with a staff or cane in old age).”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Here, on a rainy Saturday morning, is a learning support on using adverbs of time.
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 learning support on the primary Roman deities. If you teach anything related to classical mythology, you might find this useful.
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 reading on the birth and growth of the Internet with a comprehension worksheet to accompany it. For the right student, I suspect, this will be some relatively high interest material. In fact, it might work well with this material on the ARPAnet, which was the precursor to Internet we all use today.
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.
How was Cotton Mather related to Increase Mather? Increase (1639-1723) was the father of Cotton (1663-1728). Both were clergymen, theologians, and prolific writers in Puritan New England.
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Here’s a learning support for differentiating between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses that I use when I teach this particular element of good style in writing.
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 intentional or unintentional expression of a word or idea that implies more than one meaning and usually leaves uncertainty in the reader. William Empson, in his Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), outlined and defined seven different kinds of verbal nuance. He maintained that language functioning with artistic complexity connotes as much and often more than it denotes.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Several years ago, when I had just started dealing with the problem of homophone confusion among the students I serve, I whipped up this basic learning support on three of the most commonly misused homophones, to wit, two, too and to; your and you’re; and there their, and they’re. I need to emphasize the modifier basic here, because this is about as basic as it gets. Over time I will post more sophisticated versions of this.
In fact, I almost just tossed this. But since I have 13 GB of storage on this website, and only a little over 2 GB of accumulated material (which is nonetheless about 14,000 documents), I figure I can afford to duplicate a few things, and place a few things that haven’t exactly reached the peak of their development. In fact, that’s exactly what you have here.
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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Reference
Tagged homophones, learning supports
Today’s Text is a complete lesson plan on using adverbs to modify adverbs. I start this lesson with this short exercise on the idiom “money burning a hole in one’s pocket.” Should this lesson go into a second day, here is a second short exercise, this one a on the homophones pore, poor, and pour. The mainstay of this lesson is this scaffolded worksheet on using adverbs to modify adverbs. Depending on the students you’re serving, they may need this learning support, which is a word bank to use with the cloze exercises on the worksheet. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy-answer key 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.
“A poem of some 17,000 lines by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400). It was probably begun around 1387 and worked on into the 1390s, but apparently not completed. It was one of the first pieces of literature to be printed in England, in 1477 by William Caxton. The tales do not come from Canterbury but are, within the fictional framework of the work, told by various pilgrims en route to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury—one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in the Middle Ages. There is some uncertainty as to what order Chaucer intended the stories to be in, but the following is how they appear in the authoritative Riverside edition, following the Ellesmere manuscript:
• General Prologue
• The Knight’s Tale
• The Miller’s Tale
• The Reeve’s Tale (a reeve was a manorial steward)
• The Cook’s Tale
• The Man of Law’s Tale
• The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• The Friar’s Tale
• The Summoner’s Tale (a summoner summoned delinquents to appear before an ecclesiastical courts
• The Clerk’s Tale (a clerk was an ecclesiastical student)
• The Merchant’s Tale
• The Squire’s Tale
• The Franklin’s Tale (a franklin was a landowner of free but not noble birth, probably ranking below the gentry.
• The Physician’s Tale
• The Pardoner’s Tale (pardoner’s sold papal indulgences, a much abused practice)
• The Shipman’s Tale (a shipman was a ship’s master)
• The Prioress’s Tale
• Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas
• Chaucer’s Tale of Melibeus
• The Monk’s Tale
• The Nun’s Priest’s Tale
• The Second Nun’s Tale
• The Canon Yeoman’s Tale
• The Manciple’s Tale (a manciple was a servant who bought provision for a college or in of court)
• The Parson’s Tale
• Chaucer’s Retracion
It seems that Chaucer’s original idea was to have many more stories since in the General Prologue the host proposes that each of the 30 or so pilgrims tells four tales each.
A film version (1971) by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), focusing on the bawdier tales, was not well received.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
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