“The process of discussing or going over new information in order to form connections with familiar information, a process that helps memory and affects depth of processing. There is a great deal of evidence in support of the idea that the more details are processed and repeated, the more likely they are to be retrieved from long-term memory.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“hidden curriculum: What schools teach students by example and by their social organization, as opposed to the subject matter that they officially teach. For example, a school’s hidden curriculum might teach that boys are strong and undisciplined and girls are smart and well behaved; or that learning is something that is done to students rather than something that students must do for themselves; or that being popular is more important than being smart; of that societies are organized according to rules, that some of these rules are arbitrary, and that there are consequences for breaking the rules. Some of the hidden curriculum is good, and some of it is not. Some of what sociologists call the hidden curriculum is due not to socialization but to human nature. Like other large social organizations, schools need rules to function, and people need to learn what the rules are, when to follow them, and when it is appropriate to challenge them.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“cultural literacy: Knowledge of the culture in which one lives–not only its vocabulary and idioms but also references to specific events, individuals, places, literature, myths, folk tales, advertising, and other ‘insider’ information that would be familiar to those who have lived in the culture but that would be unknown to those who have not lived in the culture. It is the unstated, taken-for-granted knowledge necessary for reading comprehension and effective schooling within a culture. The concept of cultural literacy was popularized by E.D. Hirsch Jr. in his best-selling book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Critics claimed that it was elitist for anyone to attempt to define what everyone should know, but Hirsch contended that the teaching of cultural literacy was egalitarian because it had the result of breaking down social barriers and disseminating elite knowledge to everyone. Further, describing what constitutes cultural literacy within a given culture is an empirical, descriptive procedure, not a prescriptive one. The cultural literacy needed in Brazil or France of Thailand, for example, would be distinctive to those who live in that country. See also Core Knowledge (CK) program.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Subjunctive: A grammatical category that contrasts with indicative in the mood systems of verbs in various languages, and expresses uncertainty or non-factuality. Some languages have a range of subjunctive tenses: Latin (Caveat emptor: Let the buyer beware); French (Je veux que tu travailles, literally ‘I want that you should work,’ I would like you to work’). There was no such a system in Old English (Ne he ealu ne drince opp w in: Nor shall he drink ale or wine), but in Modern English there are few distinctive subjunctive forms and the use of the the term is controversial. Grammarians have traditionally described English as if it had a subjunctive system comparable to Latin and French, with present and past subjunctive tenses. This approach poses problems, because the ‘present’ subjunctive is used in subordinate clauses referring to both present and past time: They are demanding that we pay now and They demanded that we pay there and then. In form, this subjunctive is identical with the base of the verb (the bare infinitive), which means that, when the reference is to present time, it only differs from the indicative (except with the verb be) in the third-person singular: We suggest that he leave soon as against They say he leaves at dawn tomorrow. With past reference, the difference between the indicative is noticeable for all persons, as in We suggested he leave.
The subjunctive has three uses: (1) Mandative. Mainly in subordinate clauses, following a verb, adjective, or noun expressing a past or present command, suggestion, or other theoretical possibility: I insist that she disband the team; It is essential that it be disbanded; She ignored his request that she disband the team. When a negative is used with this subjunctive, it precedes the verb: He requested that she not embarrass him, except with be when not be and be not are both possible: He was anxious that his name be not/not be brought into disrepute. The mandative subjunctive is commoner in American English than British English, but appears to be on the increase in British English. In both, but especially in British English, it can be replace by a should– construction or an indicative: He requested that she should not embarrass him; He was anxious tat his name was not brought into disrepute. (2) Conditional and concessive. Sometimes formally in subordinate clauses of condition or concession: If music be the food of love, play on…; Whether that be the case or not…; Though he ask a thousand times, the answer is still NO. The alternatives are an indicative or a should-phrase: If music is…; Though he should ask…. This usage does not extend to past time. (3) Formulaic. In independent clauses mainly in set expressions. Some follow normal subject-verb word order (God save the Queen! Heaven forbid!), while others have inversion of the main verb and subject (Long live the Queen!); Far be it from me to interfere). Come plus a subject introduces a subordinate clause: Come the end of the month, (and) there’ll be more bills to pay.
The ‘past’ subjunctive is now often called the were-subjunctive, because this is the only form in which there is a distinction from the indicative, and then only in the first- and third-person singular: If I were you…as opposed to If I was you. It is used with present and future (not past) reference in various hypothetical clauses, including condition: If only I were young again; If he were asked, he might help; This feels as if it were wool; I wish she were here now; Suppose this were discovered; I’d rather it were concealed. In popular and non-formal speech and writing, the were-subjunctive is often replaced by the indicative was, which brings this verb into line with other verbs, where the past tense is similarly used for hypotheses about the present and future: If only I knew how; I’d rather you said nothing. Were is, however, widely preferred in If I were you…. In the fixed phrase as it were (He’s captain of the ship, as it were), were cannot be replaced by was. The use of were instead of was to refer to a real past possibility is generally considered an over-correction: If I were present on that occasion, I remember nothing of it. This contrasts with the purely hypothetical past, If I had been present…, which strongly implies but I was not.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
“affective: (Function, meaning) having to do with the speaker’s feelings. E.g. one might say, as a neutral statement, ‘I have finished it’; or one might say, with triumph or amazement, ‘I have actually finished it.’ What is said is in other respects the same, but the utterances differ in affective meaning. Also of the intonations themselves or of other individual units: e.g. beastly is an affective form in This is a beastly nuisance.
Also called ‘emotive,’ ‘expressive.’ Affective meaning has been distinguished variously from cognitive meaning, propositional meaning, or the representational or referential function of language.”
Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged professional development, term of art
“bourgeoisie: (Fr. citizen class) Term used by Marxists to indicate those persons other than the agricultural capitalist who do not, like the proletariat, live by the sale of their labor. They include, on the one hand, industrialists, financiers and members of the liberal professions; on the other, small artisans and shopkeepers who are described as the ‘petty” bourgeoisie, although their standard of living may not be appreciably higher, and may even be lower, than that of the proletariat. According to Marxist theory, the bourgeoisie arose with modern industrialization, breaking feudal patterns of society and replacing the feudal lords of the ruling class; the petty bourgeoisie will gradually become proletarianized and the proletariat will then succeed its remaining members as masters of society.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged philosophy/religion, professional development, term of art
By 2008, when I started my third and final job working in the New York City Department of Education, I was (or at least I thought I was) beginning to hit my stride in preparing differentiated instruction for struggling learners. When I arrived at my new posting, however, I found I needed to create some sort of differentiation for a research paper project that was a joint requirement of the global studies and English departments.
So, I got right to it. The theme of this research paper assignment was oppression, and there were at least a dozen topics from which to choose. I chose three, made adapted research papers for them, and worked with students on them.
The next year, the scope and content of the assignment changed; the following year, it changed again. I tried to keep up, but in the end I thought it best just to write a set of broad assignments and use those. I’ve posted those in slightly different formats elsewhere on this blog.
Anyway, here are two documents I prepared as supports and instructions for working on these assignments: the first is a learning support that explains research topics and the second is the rules for completing these differentiating assignments. The five posts above this one are the assignments themselves. Let me forewarn you that this is not some of my best work; but rather than throw away these assignments, I’ll post them here in the possibility that someone might be able to use them. Like everything here, these are formatted in Microsoft Word, so you can edit, rewrite, and manipulate them to suit you and your students’ needs.
This series of documents continues for six posts above.
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.
“Parallelism: In rhetoric, a device in which a formula or structural pattern is repeated, as in the Latin sequence veni, vidi, vici and its English translation I came, I saw, I conquered. It occurs in sayings and proverbs (such as Now you see them, now you don’t and Out of sight, out of mind) and in verse and poetic prose (‘My mother groaned, my father wept—/ Into the dangerous world I leapt’ (William Blake, Songs of Experience)).”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
“Teacher Talk: A semi-technical term in educational research and applied linguistics for the characteristic (often simplified) style of speech of teachers. In general terms, this may be prompted by the social setting of the classroom, with repetition, rephrasing for the sake of clarity, and patterns of stereotyped interaction with learners, such as question, response, and evaluation. For teachers of English as a foreign language, speech may be slower and clearer than is usual, avoiding and minimizing elided usages such as must’ve/musta and ‘sno good y’-know, repeating the same thing in several ways, and using expressions particularly associated with education, classrooms, and textbooks.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
“adverb: A word of a class traditionally defined as a modifying a verb, e.g. badly in He wrote it badly, seen as a modifier of wrote.
One of the parts of speech established in antiquity. In the grammar of English, the words called adverbs are in practice those whose primary roles is a s modifier of something other than a noun. Thus an adverb such as utterly modifies a verb or verb phrase in They destroyed it utterly, and an adjective in This is utterly crazy. Very modifies an adjective, as in a very big house, or an adverb, as in very badly. Then has its primary role in e.g. I did it then, though it can also modify a noun, e.g. in her then husband. The case for lumping such words together is that many have been formed with the suffix -ly, and their roles often overlap.”
Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
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