Tag Archives: readings/research

The Normal Curve

Posted on January 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on the normal curve along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. If statistics are your bailiwick, I would appreciate a comment on whether or not you think this is a good general introduction to the subject. Even for an innumerate dolt (with, I concede, not much interest in the subject) like myself, this reading makes sense.

But what do you think?

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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Earth Art

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Earth Art: An umbrella term for related movements originating in the mid-1960s in which substances like dirt, rocks, snow, and grass are embraced as the artist’s media. Works range in size from gallery pieces to large tracts of land, such as Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), which jutted 1,500 feet into the Great Salt Lake. As with many site-specific works, these may be known to the public primarily through photographic documentation. Amalgams from the 1980s have resulted in new trends termed eco-feminism, eco-Dada, and environmental protest art. Compare Environment Art.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Saturday Night Live

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

If you or your students can use them, here is a reading on Saturday Night Live along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The show is soon to arrive, amazingly, at its fiftieth anniversary. As a friend of mine once put it, it gave us a reason to stay home on Saturday nights when we were young–which was probably a good thing in terms of our financial and physical (and perhaps moral) health. The reading, for all that, is relatively short.

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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John J. Audubon

Posted on December 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

If you can use it, and I say that with the confidence of experience, because the study of John J. Audubon at the primary and secondary secondary levels of education isn’t much done, here is a reading on John J. Audubon along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As with most readings from the Intellectual Devotional series, this one-page text does an excellent job of encapsulating a complex life, particularly Audubon’s, uh, unorthodox working methods. What is doesn’t report, which I learned in the process of preparing this post, is that Audubon was a slaveholder.

So, what a bitter irony that he is buried in Harlem.

This post would not be complete without mentioning Audubon’s achievements, particularly his majestic and magisterial Birds of America, the double elephant folio he produced, and which is now a high spot in American antiquarian book collecting. Most copies–there are 120 known in all–of the book are in the possession of research libraries around the United States–the Beinecke Library at Yale keeps its copy (like its copy of the Gutenberg Bible, which came out of the Melk Abbey) out for display in its main gallery. When I followed various of the great research libraries on Twitter e.g. The Huntington Library, the Lilly Library, The Newberry Library, and, again, the Beinecke at Yale, a couple of them filmed and posted the turning of pages of Birds of America, a ritual worth watching.

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: Multiple Intelligences

Posted on December 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

“multiple intelligences (MI): The theory that many people have many ways of demonstrating their capabilities and that rather than being a single entity, intelligence is made up of distinct learning proficiencies that can work individually or together. In 1983, psychologist Howard Gardner introduced the concept of multiple intelligences in his book Frames of Mind to show that the usual school-based emphasis on rationality and logic is not the only way to be ‘intelligent.’ There is now a huge following for MI; many schools have adopted some version of it, and related training and professional development programs have proliferated. Gardner originally identified seven intelligences, only the first two of which are typically valued by schools: verbal-linguistic (the ability to use language to convey information well and to analyze language use); logical-mathematical (the capacity to analyze problems logically, grasp abstractions, recognize codes and patterns, and investigate issues scientifically) visual-spatial (the ability to recognize and manipulate the relationships of object, concepts, or images in different dimensions); musical-rhythmic (sensitivity to pitch and rhythm of sounds, as well as skill in performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns); bodily-kinesthetic (the ability to use body movement to connect with information, solve problems, and convey ideas); interpersonal (the awareness of others’ intentions, motivations, and feelings, and the ability to interact with others with understanding); and intrapersonal (the capacity to understand oneself and to recognize one’s own feelings, fears, and motivations). Gardner subsequently added and eighth intelligence: naturalist intelligence, or the ability to recognize, categorize, and draw on certain features of the natural environment. Critics say that these intelligences are actually aptitudes or abilities, or variations of rational thinking, rather than what most people consider general intelligence, and that no one can function successfully in the modern world without the linguistic and logical skills valued by schools.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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14 Reading Comprehension Worksheets on Kobe Bryant

Posted on December 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

OK, I just finished writing these 14 reading comprehension worksheets on Kobe Bryant. These follow very closely the Wikipedia article on Mr. Bryant. In fact, each worksheet is named for the sub-heading in the reading about which it asks questions. If you want to make your own worksheets, here is the worksheet template.

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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Thomas Henry Huxley on the Great Tragedy of Science

Posted on December 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

“The great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

Thomas Henry Huxley, “Biogenesis and Abiogenesis” (1870)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Dalton Trumbo

Posted on December 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Dalton Trumbo: (1905-1976) American screenwriter and novelist. One of Hollywood’s highest paid writers in the 1930s and 1940s, Trumbo was blacklisted and served a prison term for his refusal—as one of the ‘Hollywood Ten’—to answer questions about Communist affiliations posed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947. Living in Mexico, he continued to write popular movie scripts, such as Exodus (1960), The Sandpiper (1965), and The Fixer (1968), although some of his work in the 1950s had to be credited to pseudonyms. He published four novels, including Johnny Got His Gun, all of which expressed his populist attitudes.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Descriptive and Prescriptive Grammar

Posted on December 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Descriptive and Prescriptive Grammar: Contrasting terms in linguistics. A descriptive grammar is an account of a language that seeks to describe how it is used objectively, accurately, systematically, and comprehensively. A prescriptive grammar is an account of a language that sets out rules (prescriptions) for how it should be used and for what it should not be used (proscriptions), based on norms derived from a particular model of grammar. For English, such a grammar may prescribe I as in It is I and proscribe me as in It’s me. It may proscribe like used as a conjunction, as in He behaved like he was in charge, prescribing instead He behaved as if he were in charge. Prescriptive grammars have been criticized for not taking account of language change and stylistic variation, and for imposing the norms of some groups on all users of a language. They have been discussed by linguists as exemplifying specific attitudes to language and usage. Traditional grammar books have often, however, combined description and prescription. Since the late 1950s, it has become common in linguistics to contrast descriptive grammars with generative grammars. The former involve a description of linguistic structures, usually based on utterance elicited from native-speaking informants. The latter, introduced by Chomsky, concentrate on providing an explicit account of an ideal native speaker’s knowledge of language (competence) rather than a description of samples (performance). Chomsky argued that generative grammars are more valuable, since they capture the creative aspect of human linguistic ability. Linguists generally regard both approaches as complementary.”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Term of Art: Total Physical Response

Posted on December 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Total Physical Response: A language teaching method based on the belief that students will learn better when full bodily motion is involved in the process. Developed by educator and researcher James J. Asher, TPR is supposed to replace the traditional learning strategy of sitting at a desk and reading a book. Verbal commands are replaced by physical ones. For example, teachers may teach the alphabet by having students like on the floor to form letter shapes or have students learn punctuation by mimicking the shape of a period, a comma, or an exclamation point. There is some historical precedent for TPR; in the early 19th century, some pedagogues believed that students would learn the alphabet if they ate biscuits in the shape of letters, an ineffective practice that eventually disappeared.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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