“A tall, slender tower attached to a mosque and from which the muezzin calls people to prayer from one of its several balconies. It may be either rectangular or cylindrical in plan. Seville’s Giralda tower (12th century) was once a minaret, later redecorated in Christian styles.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“…This all means that how teachers look and sound when talking to students can be quite revealing. Participants were asked to rate teachers’ perceptions of students to whom they were speaking with brief (ten-second) audio and video clips. Though the clips only focused on the teachers’ behavior and did not show the students, participants as young as fourth grade were able to successfully differentiate between two types of students being addressed by the teachers: those who were considered to be ‘high’ achieving and those who were ‘low’ achieving (Babad, Bernieri, & Rosenthal, 1991). The teacher interacted with the ‘high’- achieving student more positively than with the ‘low’-achieving student. With less than half a minute of observation, our perception of how others, in this case teachers, feel about students can be readily identified.
As the authors point out in the discussion of their findings, with only ten seconds of film footage, there was barely enough time for teachers to utter more than two words; thus truly it was the manner in which the teachers addressed the students and not the content of their discussion that affected the ratings of how the teacher felt about each student.
Though these findings may seem to speak directly to the so-called expectancy effects, namely the finding that how students perform in class may be largely influenced by how the teacher feels about them (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968), our focus here is more upon student comfort than academic performance. Now more than four decades after Pygmalion in the Classroom thrust the idea of teacher expectancy effects into the professional and public vernaculars (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968), there is still a fair amount of controversy regarding just how strongly teacher expectations of students affect intelligence and performance (Jussim & Harber, 2005).
Rather than wade into these murky waters, we will instead focus on the indisputable points that because detection of emotion is instinctual, teachers must be incredibly careful and conscientious about how they deal with students in a classroom, particularly those who are ‘easy’ and those who are seen as more ‘challenging.’ Given the fact that teacher interactions with students influence how those students are perceived by their peers (Birch & Ladd, 1998), the case for conscious monitoring of behavior cannot be overstated.
It is recommended that educators plan ahead for interactions with students they may consider more trying or challenging than others. Just as the successful teacher plans for contingencies such as having extra supplies for students who may forget of be unable to afford their own, so must she also plan ahead for the possibility of questions, to which answers have already been provided, or other solicitations that could possibly evoke even subtle expressions of exasperation or annoyance.”
Excerpted from: Rekart, Jerome L. The Cognitive Classroom: Using Brain and Cognitive Science to Optimize Student Success. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2013.
“The difference between a topic-centered and an idea-centered curriculum/instruction model is the difference between memorizing facts related to the American Revolution and developing and sharing ideas related to the concepts of freedom and independence as a result of studying the American Revolution. It is the difference between viewing the O.J. Simpson trial and drawing insights into the concept of justice from discussions of the trial. It is the difference between the facts of the Alaska oil spill and an understanding of the importance of environmental sustainability. Finally, it is the difference between the construction of mathematical angles and knowledgeable application of geometric form to ensure architectural strength in design.”
Excerpted from: Erickson, H. Lynn. Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction: Teaching Beyond the Facts. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, 2002.
“Mannerism (noun): An author’s marked or habitual peculiarity of style; characteristically individual locution or stylistic idiosyncrasy; artificiality. Adjective: mannered; manneristic.
‘Much of what struck foreign observers as bizarre in American description was the new linguistic confusion of present and future, fact and hope. This became a mannerism, or even a mode of American speech. Statements which foreigners took for lies or braggadocio, American speakers intended to be vaguely clairvoyant.’”
Daniel Boorstin, The Americans
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“A collection of 100 tales by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75), completed in c.1353. Many of the tales were old at this time, and many later writers–including Chaucer and Shakespeare–borrowed stories from the collection. In the framework story, seven ladies and three gentlemen escape from Florence when the Black Death arrives in 1348, and spend their time each telling one tale per day for ten days (Decameron comes from the Greek deka, ‘ten’, and hemera, ‘day’). (There is comparable framework story in The Canterbury Tales.) A film version (1971) by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) concentrates on some of the earthier tales. A similar collection to Boccaccio’s entitled The Heptameron (1558) was ascribed to Margaret of Angouleme (1492-1549), queen of Navarre. The tales are said to have been related in seven days (Greek hepta, ‘seven’).”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“In grammatical description, the term for two non-finite VERB forms, the –ing participle (known traditionally as the present participle) and the –ed participle (known traditionally as the past participle or the passive participle).
The -ing (present) participle: This verb form ends with the inflection –ing and is used in combination with a form of the auxiliary form be for the progressive continuous, as in: am driving, was playing, will be going, has been talking. It is also used as the verb in an –ing participle clause as in: Marvin and Jane liked playing with their grandchildren; Despite his protestations, Stanley was not averse to having a birthday party; John and Linda were happy to see Daniel behaving himself during the meal; After giving her lecture, Venetia had lunch with me at the College; The young man driving me to the shopping center was Jeremy.
The –ed (past) participle: This verb form ends with the inflection spelled –ed, -d, or –t for all regular verbs and many irregular verbs, but many irregular verbs form it with an –en or –n inflection (as in stolen, known) or with a change in the middle vowel (as in sung, in which it is often identical with the simple past form, as with sat), or a combination of the two methods (as with written). The –ed participle combines with a form of the auxiliary form have for the perfect: has cared, had said, may have walked. It combines with a form of the auxiliary be for the passive: is paid, was told, are being auctioned, could not have seen. It is also used as the verb in an –ed participle clause. I had my study redecorated; Asked for his opinion, Tom was non-committal; Among the objects recovered from the ship was a chair stamped with the captain’s initials.
Attributive Uses: Both participles may be used in the attributive position like an adjective, but only if the participle indicates some sort of permanent characteristic: running water, the missing link, a broken heart, lost property. The phrase The Laughing Cavalier is possible as the name of a picture (the man is laughing all the time), but Who is that laughing man? would be odd in most contexts. The –ed participle usually has a passive meaning (listed buildings, burnt almonds, written instructions), but it may also be used actively with some intransitive verbs (an escaped prisoner). Some participles that are not permanent enough to be used attributively alone are acceptable when modified (their long-awaited visit).
Participles and Word Formation: There is a range of usage between participles that which remain fully verbal (running in swiftly running water) and those that in some contexts are completely adjectival (interesting in a very interesting idea; disappointed in a very disappointed man). There are also some participle-like formations for which there are no corresponding verbs: an unexplained discrepancy, an unconvincing narrative, for which there are no conventional verbs *to unexplain and *to unconvince; a bearded man; a forested hillside; a blue-eyed man; a one-armed bandit are common constructions which are aspects of word-formation rather than grammar.
Participial Clauses: Traditionally known as participial phrases, such clauses function in various ways: (1) they can follow noun phrases (like abbreviated relative clauses): ‘The train (which is) now standing at Platform 5 is…,’ ‘The food (that was) served on the plane was….'(2) They can function rather like finite subordinate clauses, with or without a conjunction, and with various meanings, often of time (‘While running for the train, he lost his wallet’) reason (‘Jostled by the crowd, he did not really see what happened’), or result (‘The train started suddenly, throwing an elderly passenger to the floor’). (3) They can follow an object verb of the senses: ‘We could all hear him singing in the bath;’ ‘He didn’t see that soap lying on the floor.’ Occasionally this multiplicity of functions may lead to ambiguity: ‘I witnessed a sergeant push his way past supporters drinking openly in the aisle’ (letter to Daily Telegraph, 27 May 1988).
The Dangling Participle: When a participial clause contains its own subject it is called an ABSOLUTE CLAUSE, as in ‘Weather permitting, we’ll go sailing this weekend.’ When, as is more usual, such a clause does not contain a subject, it normally refers grammatically to the subject of the main clause: in ‘I made my way, depressed, to the ticket office,’ it is clear who was depressed, and in ‘The woman on the chair beside was tipped onto my lap, complaining all the time’ it is clear who was complaining (both from Colin Thubron, Behind the Wall, 1987). Failure to maintain such a clear relationship leads to the so-called dangling, hanging, misrelated, or unattached participle, as in: ‘Her party was the first to discover that there were no sleepers left. The entire section had been booked. Faced with a forty-four-hour journey, this was far from good news’ (Patrick Marnham, So Far from God, 1985).
With participles that attach themselves to the wrong noun, the effect may be momentarily confusing even if the writer’s meaning is clear: ‘[Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s] celebrity on television was so great that, boarding an empty bus late one rainy night when in a white tie with rows of medals, a conductress arranged with the driver to take him to the door of Wheeler’s small house off Haymarket’ (Anthony Powell, To Keep the Ball Rolling, 1982). Here, the meaning may be fairly obvious, but on first reading it is the conductress who boards the bus. In the following example, it is the lines that apparently provided the clues: ‘By taking a great many observations and analyzing them statistically, the lines gave crucial clues about the intervening space between us and the quasars, and therefore of the universe’s early history’ (in “Bonfire of the Cosmos,” Observer, 16 April, 1989). Sometimes, the pictures presented are simply absurd: ‘After traveling by road all day…, the 123-room Sahara is an air-conditioned all-mod-cons watering hole’ (Daily Telegraph, 22 September 1984); ‘There, coasting comfortably down the attractive green coastline, the town of Malacca with its prominent hill was very evident’ (Tim Severin, The Sinbad Voyage, 1982).
Participial Prepositions and Conjunctions: Apparent exceptions to the rule that participles should be properly attached are a number of participial forms that now function as prepositions, such as following in ‘There was a tremendous cleaning up to do following the storm,’ and including in ‘We all enjoyed ourselves, including the dog;’ and participle forms that are now conjunctions, such as providing (that) and provided (that) in ‘Everything will be all right providing/provided you don’t panic,’ and given in ‘Given the difficulties, I’d say it was a success.’”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
“…But a coherent curriculum also fosters through the grades, in a deliberate and systematic design, increasing sophistication in critical content knowledge, conceptual understanding, and complex performance abilities. The current emphasis on meeting national and state standards requires thoughtful planning in curriculum design. We cannot afford to do dinosaurs and rain forests at three different grade levels. We need to use the precious time in schools to maximum advantage. This does not mean that we cannot do thematic, integrated units or bring relevance and active student engagement into the learning process. But it does signal the need for coherent curricular plans that achieve the desired outcomes for students–outcomes that are based on the realities of living, learning, and working in the 21st century, as well as the mandates of discipline-based standards and assessments.”
Excerpted from: Erickson, H. Lynn. Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction: Teaching Beyond the Facts. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, 2002.
“An approach to reading instruction developed in the 1950s as an alternative to basic reading programs; emphasizes student selection of reading materials and self-pacing in reading. With this method, the teacher adjusts instruction to student needs during small-group work and in individual conferences.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
The other day, while rummaging around in a folder containing learning supports for English Language Arts lessons, I found this glossary of critical terms for use in English classes. I have no idea whence I excerpted this; the lack of citation troubles me. In any case, it is a list of conceptual terms mostly at the center of what English Language Arts teachers profess, and particularly, in many cases (aesthetic impact as a term of art comes immediately to mind) for advanced 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.
[Nota bene, please, that I originally posted much of this material in a Weekly Text from August 28, 2015, which would have made it one of the earliest publications on this blog. This lesson continues to evolve, so I have decided to publish it once more with a couple of supplementary materials. If you have used this in your classroom, and plan to use it again, you may want to check back here every so often to see if I’ve added documents. I’ve also given this post a new title so that it is easy to search and locate on Mark’s Text Terminal.]
Is there a way we can assist our students in remembering what we teach them in the classroom? More broadly, can we help students become stronger, more effective, and therefore more satisfied learners, particularly in terms of retention (de rigeur now for hyper-tested students), by showing them how memory actually functions? The answer, or part of the answer at least, thanks to Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, is yes. Professor Willingham writes a column called “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” for The American Educator, which is an excellent quarterly journal of research into pedagogical practice and educational policy issues published by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). I’m amazed at the consistently cogent and useful scholarly research the AFT presents in this first-rate publication.
Anyway, in the winter 2008-2009 issue, Professor Willingham published his column under the title–clicking on this hyperlink will download of PDF of the article–“What Will Improve a Student’s Memory?” This is a cognitive science experiment in three parts that demonstrates the role of thought and memory in the learning process. So far, I’ve developed for use in teaching a lesson adapted from Professor Willingham’s First Demonstration of Memory, will help you and your students conduct the first of these three experiments, then sort out its immediate results. Through this clever and concrete demonstration, students will learn that thinking is the parent of memory–as Professor Willingham emphasizes. I like to start the year with this lesson; in fact, I teach it on the first day of school, before discussing classroom norms and expectations, as a way of setting the tone (i.e. your learning comes first) for the year.
To get to the instructional material in the PDF, you’ll need download the article by clicking on the link above, then scroll down through the document to page 26, “Demonstration of the Three Principles.” You’ll use Demonstration 1: once you’ve read through the procedure for the demonstration. Nonetheless, here is the unit plan for all three lessons that rationalize the use of these three demonstrations of memory with students. Eventually, I’ll write the other two lessons for demonstrations two and three, and post those here as well.
To the documents for this lesson: here is the lesson plan for the First Demonstration. Although the PDF posted above includes the procedures for all three demonstrations, this is the typescript of the teaching procedure for the First Demonstration (this text is also included in the lesson plan). This structured and numbered worksheet might hasten the process of delivering this lesson, particularly for struggling students. Over time, working with a large and homogenous group or students, I developed two supports for concluding the work on this lesson. Students will need to determine, as part of this exercise, which kinds of words they remembered. This first version of the support give students the words in the order in which they were read, and asks them to find the words they remembered by searching the list. That requires focus and the ability to sort out information; some students I have served over the years struggled with this part of the activity. So I designed a second version of the support with the words read arranged by type in columns in a table, and therefore a bit less challenging to sort, interpret, and process.
I find this lesson, taught to a well-focused class generally takes less than the 44 minutes my school has deemed adequate for conveying new information and providing students with an opportunity to use it. After finishing the procedural work, and sorting out the results of that work to assess its meaning (it’s part of the procedure in the article), I like to ask students a few questions. The big question is, of course, Why did you remember the words you rated for pleasantness? Another query I use is What can students and teachers do to work together to study words in a way helps students remember their meaning and use them in their future discourses? (Do your students understand the concept of discourse? It seems to me it’s a word and concept high school students really ought to know.) I also ask questions that prepare students for some of the work we’ll do that is animated by Professor Willingham’s first demonstration: Is there something common to words that can help us understand them as families? which helps to rationalize the use of word root worksheets. Is there a way to learn words by thinking about what they might mean? justifies the use of do-now context clues worksheets. In any case, the really big question this and the other two Demonstrations ask is this: Thinking about the outcome of this thought experiment, what are its implications for classroom practice?
For teachers, the big question really just that: what does this demonstration of memory imply for classroom teaching practice. It’s a conversation that circumstances never afforded me an opportunity to conduct or join, despite using this version of the lesson as a professional development exercise for colleagues on a couple of occasions.
In any case, through this clever and concrete demonstration, students will learn that thinking is the parent of memory–as Professor Willingham emphasizes in his article. I like to start the year with this lesson; in fact, I teach it on the first day of school, before discussing classroom norms and expectations, as a way of setting the tone (i.e. your learning and the means by which it is accomplished are of paramount importance in this classroom) for the year.
Most of the vocabulary building work I’ll publish on Mark’s Text Terminal derives directly from my understanding of the cognitive mechanisms Professor Willingham’s “First Demonstration” exposes. This lesson, if nothing else, may help you persuade resistant students that this is a useful way to learn and master new words and the concepts or things they define.
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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