This week’s Text is a context clues worksheet on the use of concrete as an adjective. For the purposes of the context of the sentences here, students are looking for a meaning of “characterized by or belonging to immediate experience of actual things or events,” “specific,” “particular,” “real,” and “tangible.”
Opposing concrete, both in this post and in meaning, is this context clues worksheet on the adjective abstract. The sentences in this document provide context for an understanding of the definition of this word as “disassociated from any specific instance,” “difficult to understand,” “insufficiently factual,” : “expressing a quality apart from an object <the word poem is concrete, poetry is ~>,” “dealing with a subject in its abstract aspects,” and “having only intrinsic form with little or no attempt at pictorial representation or narrative content.”
These are obviously important learning words across domains of knowledge–and particularly in the humanities. I cannot imagine teaching poetry, to offer one obvious example, without students understanding fully the meanings of these two words–and what they represent in the use of language.
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.
Mark's Text Terminal 
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