Tag Archives: professional development

Richard Lederer’s Famous History of the World in Student Bloopers

Posted on January 16, 2020 | Leave a comment

House cleaning continues at Mark’s Text Terminal. Over 12 years of storing material inevitable redundancies occur, as do good intentions never realized–i.e. material planned, even begun, but never executed. For the next week or so, I’ll post materials that might be useful to you, readers and colleagues. In so doing, I’ll drive to separate the precious metals from the dross and the wheat from the chaff–and try not to waste your time with dross and chaff (shall I continue to beat these overworked metaphors?).

Somewhere along the line, most college students, I hope, encounter Richard Lederer’s famous (or infamous, I suppose, depending on one’s sense of humor) “The World According to Student Bloopers.” If you can use it, here is a typescript of that hilarious compendium.

Should you find typos in this document, they can be easily corrected by consulting Professor Lederer’s original under the middle of the three hyperlinks (“The World…”) above.

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Term of Art: Attribution

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“attribution: The ways in which an individual understands the sources of success, difficulty, or failure. Often, people with learning disabilities attribute their successes and failures to factors they do not control, such as luck, the nature of the task, or their own inadequacies. By contrast, successful learners tend to attribute failure or success to their own level of effort and perseverance, and see themselves as having control over the outcomes of their work.

Attribution theory provides an approach to understand the difficulties with motivation experience by some people with learning problems, and also suggests that direct guidance in changing attribution styles may be helpful to those with learning disorders.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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A Lesson Plan on Developmental Delay

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

Now that I’ve written it, I am having a hard time imagining where I will use this lesson plan on developmental delay. If you can use it, here are the short reading and vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that drive this lesson. If you’d like a slightly longer version (more vocabulary words, and three more questions) of these documents, you can find them here.

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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Term of Art: Indirect Object

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“indirect object: An object whose semantic role is characteristically that of a recipient, e.g. to your sister in He blew a kiss to your sister; also, in most accounts, your sister in He blew your sister a kiss. Distinguished as an element in a ditransitive construction from a direct object.

The relation between sentences such as these has been described in terms of dative movement. It is in part because that relation is possible that to your sister can be distinguished, as an object, from directional phrases such as to the seaside as in He sent his family to the seaside.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Term of Art: Ad Hominem

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Ad Hominem To the man: appealing to the sentiments or prejudices of the hearer of listener rather than to his or her reason or intelligence; disparaging a person’s character rather than his or her sentiments; personal rather than substantive or ideological.

‘The boss knows all about the so-called fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem. ‘It may be a fallacy,’ he said, ‘ but it is shore-God useful. If you use the right kind of argumentum, you can always scare the hominem into a laundry bill he didn’t expect.’ Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men.”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Historical Term: Imperialism

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Imperialism: (deriv. Lat. imperium, power). Acquisition and administration of an empire, often as a part of general commercial and industrial expansion. From the 15th century onwards, Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and Britain began building overseas empires. Modern imperialism, however, probably dates from the 1880s and the scramble for colonies in under-developed Africa. Marxism-Leninism ascribes the survival of capitalism and World War I to this late surge of European imperialism. Italy, Germany and Japan failed to acquire empires in the 19th century due to their late national unification or industrialization; they attempted to do so in the 20th century by war. The USSR had been described as an imperialist power because it had absorbed the formerly independent countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and had sought to dominated neighboring states, not only Warsaw Pact countries but also Afghanistan and China. US involvement in Southeast Asia and Latin America had also resulted in the USA also being termed an imperialist power.”

Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.

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A Lesson Plan on Manic-Depressive Disorder

Posted on January 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a lesson plan on manic-depressive disorder as well as the short reading and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that are the work of this lesson. (If you’d like a reading and worksheet that are a little longer than these, you’ll find one under this hyperlink).

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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Term of Art: Rationalism

Posted on January 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Rationalism: 1. The doctrine associated especially with the French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-77), and the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von. Liebniz (1646-1716) that it is possible to obtain knowledge by reason alone, that there is only one valid system of reasoning and it is deductive in character, and that everything is explicable in principle by this form of reasoning…. 2. The more general view that everything is explicable in principle by one system of reasoning. 3. A general commitment to reason as opposed to faith, religious belief, prejudice, tradition, or any other source of belief that is without foundation in reason. Rationalist: one who believes in or practices rationalism (1, 2, 3). Rationalistic.

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

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A Lesson Plan on Bullying

Posted on January 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here’s a lesson plan on bullying with the short reading and vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that comprise the lesson’s work. If you’d like a slightly longer version of the reading and worksheet, you can find them here.

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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Ralph Tyler on Organizing Curricula

Posted on January 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“In identifying important organizing principles, it is necessary to note that the criteria, continuity, sequence, and integration apply to the experiences of the learner and not to the way in which these matters may be viewed by someone already in command of the elements to be learned. Thus, continuity involves the recurring emphasis in the learner’s experience upon these particular elements; sequence refers to the increasing breadth and depth of the learner’s development; and integration refers to the learner’s increased unity of behavior in relating to the elements involved.”

Ralph W. Tyler

Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

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