Health teachers (or any teacher, because I suspect there are more kids than we know who arrive in our schools with this challenge), here is a reading on post-traumatic stress disorder and a vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet to accompany the reading.
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.
“Apocalypse Now: A film (1979) directed by Francis Ford Coppola, loosely based on the story Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). The title refers to the Revelation of St. John the Divine, also called the Apocalypse; ‘apocalypse’ (Greek apokalupsis) literally means an uncovering, but is popularly taken to mean the violent end of the world, as described by St, John. The ‘Now’ in the title refers to the fact that the film is set during the Vietnam War (which had come to an end four years before the film’s release). The film stars Martin Sheen as US Army captain detailed to assassinated the renegade Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando, and includes such epic set pieces as a helicopter assault conducted to the accompaniment of Wagner’s ‘The Ride of the Valkyries.’ The massive cost of the film, which was shot in the Philippines and complicated when Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack, was compounded by the extent to which it went over schedule. In the film business it became known by the alternative titles Apocalypse When? or Apocalypse Later. During filming Coppola referred to the film as his “Idiodyssey.” He later said
‘We made Apocalypse the way Americans made war in Vietnam. There were too many of us, too much money and equipment—and little by little we went insane.’
In 2001 Coppola released his own cut, Apocalypse Now Redux (redux is Latin for ‘brought back,’ ‘restored’), which included the fabled ‘French plantation sequence,’ the existence of which had been rumored among fans for years.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Over the years, I have become increasingly concerned with the trouble polysemous words have caused the students under my instruction. English is such a wild mutt of a language that it’s not difficult in the least to see why it causes its learners such problems. In some cases, one needs the skills of a linguist to decode dense strands of polysemy.
While not one of the most difficult words in English, success does morph its definition as it morphs into different parts of speech. Students I have served in the past generally have trouble with sequencing and chronologies, so the idea of succession does not come easily to them. This makes understanding of the chronology, structure, and sequence of say, a royal dynasty, difficult to convey in social studies classes.
I wrote this suite of five context clues worksheets on succeed (verb), success (noun), succession (noun), successive (adjective), and successor (noun) in an attempt to help students get a grasp of this family of words. These worksheets might be best presented in one lesson–I don’t know. I’ve tended to place them with units where the words are used, but I am not at all confident that students made the associations between them necessary to understand them.
So I would be particularly interested in hearing how you used them, if you did.
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.
Okay, health teachers, perhaps you need a pair of readings on women’s reproductive health.
First, here is a reading on menarche and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that attends it.
Second, here is a quite short reading on the menstrual cycle and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
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.
“action francaise: Right-wing political movement founded in France by the journalist and poet Charles Maurras (1868-1952), which was royalist, nationalistic, and anti-Semitic and which criticized the Third French Republic for decadence. Although a freethinker, Maurras approved of Roman Catholicism, believing that its traditions were a counterforce to democratic republicanism. In 1908 he and Leon Daudet (1867-1942), a pamphleteer and essayist, began joint editorship of the movement’s newspaper, Action Francaise. The Vatican became estranged from the movement after 1926 and it drew increasingly close to fascism. Between 1940 and 1944, it gave strong support to the Vichy government and was accordingly suppressed after France was liberated; Maurras was sentenced to life imprisonment for collaboration with the Germans.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged philosophy/religion, readings/research
The statistics in the back end of this website report that there is interest among the blog’s users in the various Crime and Puzzlement lessons I have published here. My own experience using these has been quite successful, as the students with whom I have used them have actually asked to do more of them. Not to put too fine a point on this, but I don’t in general serve students who make it a habit to ask for additional work.
So, here is a lesson plan on “Music Hath Charms,” yet another Crime and Puzzlement case.
I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the American idiom “Life of Riley.” Here’s the evidentiary illustration and text that is the centerpiece of the lesson. Finally, you’ll need this typescript of the answer key and explanations of evidence to assist students in solving the case.
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.
“The Neanderthals lived in a period that comes before history. That is why we call it ‘prehistory,’ because we only have a rough idea of when it all happened. But we still know something about the people whom we call prehistoric. At the time when real history begins, which we will come to in future readings, people already had all the things we have today: clothes, houses, and tools, plows to plow with, grains to make bread with cows for milking, sheep for shearing, dogs for hunting and for company, bows and arrows for shooting and helmets and shields for protection.”
Excerpted from: Gombrich, E.H. Trans. Caroline Mustill. A Little History of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged readings/research
“Hausa: Chadic language, native to northern Nigeria (roughly from Kaduna northwards and some 200 km east of Kano westwards) and neighboring parts of Niger. Also widespread as a second language, there and elsewhere, and as a lingua franca across West Africa. Written in Arabic script before the 20th century, now largely in Roman.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
OK, health teachers, maybe you can use this reading on depression and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that attends it.
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.
“Art Brut: A term coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet to characterize spontaneous and rough artistic expression of children, prisoners, and the insane. Dubuffet’s collection of art brut inspired him to reclaim untrained and marginal artistic elements in his own work. See naïve art and ‘outsider’ art.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
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