Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb condone, which is only used transitively–a direct object must follow it. You must condone something. I cannot think of single reason why students, upon their high school graduation, shouldn’t know this oft-used English word.
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.
“Jazz was like the kind of man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.”
Quoted in NY Times Magazine, 12 September 1965
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history, humor, music, united states history
Here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on African-American music. This is the last Everyday Edit worksheet I have that’s appropriate to post for Black History Month. However, if you’d like more of these worksheets, you can find them at Education World, where the generous proprietors of that site give away a yearlong supply of them.
If you find typos in this document, your students should fix them! That’s the point of this exercise….
For a student with certain interests, e.g. the kid I had in mind when I put this together, this reading on the late, great Johnny Cash and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet are high-interest 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.
One way to introduce students to Antonio Stradivari and his prized musical instruments would be by way of this lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Stradegy.”
I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Hit Below the Belt.” Here is the PDF of the illustration and questions that drive the investigation. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key.
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.
“Fiddler on the Roof: A stage musical (1964) and film (1971), with a book by Joseph Stein, score by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. Set in pre-revolutionary Russia, and culminating in a pogrom, it relates the story of Tevye, a Jewish father (memorably played by Topol in the film), and his disapproval of the matrimonial choices made by his daughters. The musical is based on the Yiddish short story collection Tevye and His Daughters by the Russian-born US writer Sholom Aleichem (1859-1916). The significance of the title is obscure: it may be based on the proverbial expression meaning to ‘eat, drink and be merry,’ but it may be taken generally to signify a person who cheerfully makes the best of things, whatever the circumstances.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, film/television/photography, music, readings/research
“Paul Bowles: (1910-1999) American writer and composer. Born in Queens, New York, Bowles fled America at the age of eighteen to live in Paris. His early mentors Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas advised him to travel in order to develop as an artist. Bowles went on to exhaustively explore the issues that arise when modern Westerners confront non-Western cultures. Bowles first gained attention as a composer, studying with Aaron Copland and Virgil Thompson and producing scores for work by Tennessee Williams and Orson Welles. He is best known, however, for his first two books, The Sheltering Sky (1949), a novel, and the short-story collection The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950), which introduced his central theme: the disintegration of developed Western culture as it encounters more primitive societies and a less mediated natural world. Bowles is also highly regarded for his translation of North African tribal tales and his poetry. Sympathetic critics have praised his work as a powerful encapsulation of existentialism, while others have found it repetitious and stunted in development.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, music, readings/research
“There are two kinds of music—good music and bad music. Good music is music that I want to hear. Bad music is music I don’t want to hear.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, music
While I’m not sure it is necessarily a word high schoolers ought to know (although every time I qualify a blog post with those words, I find myself wondering if there is any word a high schooler doesn’t need to know), here nonetheless is a context clues worksheet on the adjective abstruse. It means, simply, “difficult to comprehend.”
If that doesn’t quite cover conceptually what you mean students to understand, then perhaps this worksheet on the adjective recondite will supply the needed depth of understanding. It means “hidden from sight, concealed,” “difficult or impossible for one of ordinary understanding or knowledge to comprehend,” and “of, relating to or dealing with something little known or obscure.”
Incidentally, I have always been impressed by the fact, and have tried to impress students with it as well, that the great rapper Guru (who died in 2010, I was sad to learn while writing this post) managed to work recondite into his song “Jazz Thing” in reference to the late, great Thelonious Monk.
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.
In the early- to mid-1970s, they were all the rage among certain of my peers, but I mostly listened to Bob Dylan in those days. If you have students who are fans of heavy metal music, then this reading on Black Sabbath and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it will be, I expect, of high interest to those students. After all, Ozzy Osbourne still occupies a relatively prominent place in the culture.
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.
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