“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
This student self-assessment and reflection form has been kicking around my to-do folder for a couple of years now for a couple of reasons. The first is that I could never determine the best way to categorize and tag it (and I post it now because I have decided to take a much more casual attitude toward categories and gags, mostly because I realized this blog has a search function); the second is that this material, I am confident, remains solidly in the authors’ copyright.
Who are, to wit, Jay McTighe and Carol Ann Tomlinson. The book is Integrating Differentiated Instruction & Understanding by Design (Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2006). If you’re interested in curriculum design in general and in particular, in this case differentiating for struggling or idiosyncratic learners (or both), you probably know the names of these two distinguished experts. The book is excellent: I read it twice, taking extensive notes both times. Then I passed it along to assistant principal under whom I served. Every time I visited his office, I noticed that the book was close at hand.
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.
“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on ‘I am not too sure.'”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference
Tagged philosophy/religion
“I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.”
Socrates
Quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“Maxim (noun): A summary universal truth, fundamental principle, or rule of conduct; proverbial or sententious saying.
‘I guess I was seven when I first heard the maxim that only people with a small vocabulary use “dirty” words. I am forty-seven and have just received a communication from a reader delivering this maxim as though he invented it. William F. Buckley, Jr., Execution Eve'”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged philosophy/religion, term of art
“The public needs to be informed that the 21st-century requires a higher standard for curriculum and instruction. This standard includes the development of critical and creative thinking; the ability to put knowledge to use in complex living, learning, and working performances; and an instructional program that gives teachers flexibility in engaging students with process and skill development.
The United States has a responsibility to educate its citizens and future citizens to the new standards and requirements. The equitable distribution of computers and technology into all schools should be a national concern and priority. School districts can systematically design curricula to integrate and focus on needed knowledge, processes, skills, and attitudes, but teachers have a right to expect the time and training to design curricula; learn new teaching methods and technologies; and collaborate in school, business, and home partnerships.”
Excerpted from: Erickson, H. Lynn. Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction: Teaching Beyond the Facts. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, 2002.
Here’s an independent practice worksheet on Aristotle. Just posting it on this chilly (21 degrees) December morning in Massachusetts brings to mind a sun-drenched agora in Athens, where philosophers passed afternoons discussing the nature of the universe.
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’s a worksheet on the Greek word root hetero. It means, of course, different and other. The adjective heterogenous, used fairly regularly in certain domains of educated discourse, springs from this root, as to a number of English words, as the document will show you and your students.
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.
“Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.”
James Madison (1751-1836)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
“Morphology: The study of the grammatical structure of words and the categories realized by them. Thus, a morphological analysis will divide girls into girl and –s; singer into sing and –er, which marks it as a noun referring to an agent.
A category is ‘morphological’ if it is realized within words. This morphological case is case as realized by different elements within nouns or words of other classes as opposed to an abstract case which might be realized differently or not at all. A morphological causative is a causative form of a verb as opposed to a causative construction, and so on.”
Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
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