Tag Archives: readings/research

Mammon

“Mammon: An Aramaic word used in the New Testament of personify riches and worldliness; also, the god of avarice or cupidity. The word occurs in Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13 to represent the opposite of a God-fearing life: ‘No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate one and love the other; or he will hold to one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’ Both Spenser, with his cave of Mammon in The Faerie Queene, and Milton, by identifying him with Vulcan in Paradise Lost, make Mammon the epitome of the evils of wealth.”

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

Aghast (adj)

It’s the Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster, so here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective aghast. It means “struck with terror, amazement, or horror” and “shocked.”

The word derives from the Middle English verb gasten, “to frighten.” As you may perceive, this is also the source of the adjective ghastly. Not surprising, I suppose, since things that are ghastly generally cause us to feel aghast.

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.

National Velvet

“National Velvet: A novel (1935) by Enid Bagnold (1889-1981). Velvet, a butcher’s daughter, win a piebald horse in a raffle. Disguised as a boy, she rides it in the Grand National, Britain’s premier steeplechase. Although she is past the winning post, she is disqualified for dismounting before the weighing-in. A popular film version (1945), directed by Clarence Brown, starred a 14-year-old Elizabeth Taylor.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

Sex Change Surgery

Here is a reading on sex change surgery along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Lest you misunderstand, this is not about the medical science or procedure of gender affirmation surgery.

Rather, it is about the infamous John/Joan case. The reading nicely job summarizes the tragic story of David Reimer, whose parents made the mistake of deferring to the New Zealand psychologist John Money. Money, who apparently coined the terms “gender identity” and “gender role,” appears to me to be at least culpable in, if not the direct cause of, the suicides of David Reimer and his twin brother. I wrote this material (using, once again, a reading from the Intellectual Devotional series) during the pandemic; as of this writing, I have not used this material with students. Nonetheless, I have tagged this post’s documents as high-interest material. Unless I miss my guess, students will indeed find these documents of considerable interest.

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.

What One Must Know to Teach Phonics

“To accurately teach reading via a systematic synthetic phonics approach, and be able to discuss this teaching with colleagues, teachers need to be aware of a whole range of terms. For instance, they need to know that a ‘digraph‘ is a grapheme made up of two letters. They need to know that a diphthong is a sound made-up sound of two vowel sounds, as well as how to recognise a dipthong in speech. They need to know about the ‘schwa‘ vowel sound because this is linked to problems children have with spellings. They need to know what a ‘morpheme‘ is–the smallest unit of meaning–and how this differs from a ‘grapheme.’ They need etymological knowledge such as the origin language of a word; is it Anglo-Saxon, French, or perhaps Latin?”

Ashman, Greg. The Truth about Teaching: An Evidence-Informed Guide for New Teachers. Los Angeles: Sage, 2018.

Louis Pasteur and Pasteurization

Here is a reading on Louis Pasteur and pasteurization along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Given the current ascendance of germ theory denialism, this reading, from the Intellectual Devotional series, is particularly timely

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.

Frieze

“Frieze: The middle section of the entablature between the architrave and the cornice, where relief sculpture was sometimes applied. Also, in interiors, the broad band between wall paneling and ceiling.”

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

Plague (n)

OK, last but not least today, here is a context clues worksheet on the noun plague. It means, in the context in which it is presented on this half-page document, “an epidemic disease causing a high rate of mortality.”

I wrote this, I am sure, to introduce the word to students ahead of a lesson on the European Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century. The context is reasonably strong, but it can always use a little help. So if you rewrite this, I would appreciate seeing your version of it. In fact, I will add it to this post. Incidentally, the bubonic plague, the cause of the Black Death, remains alive and well and occasionally breaks out, as it has intermittently in Madagascar, among other places around the globe.

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.

Figurative Language

“Figurative Language: Language which uses figures of speech; for example, metaphor, simile, alliteration (qq.v). Figurative language must be distinguished from literal (q.v.) language. ‘He hared down the street’ or ‘He ran like a hare down the street’ are figurative (metaphor and simile respectively). ‘He ran very quickly down the street’ is literal. See HYPERBOLE; METONYMY; SYNECHDOCHE.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Christopher Lasch

Christopher Lasch: (1932-1994) American social critic and cultural historian. Lasch, a professor of history, is best known for his penetrating analyses of contemporary American cultural and political phenomena. In The Culture of Narcissism (1979), which became an unlikely best-seller, Lasch examined the effects of an increasingly self-centered worldview on the family and the community. He consistently challenged contemporary Americans’ reliance on experts to determine standards of behavior and thought. The Minimal Self (1984) examines individual freedom and privacy in the light of the agencies for social control in our lives. Lasch’s last work, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1994), took its ironic title from Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses (1930) and argued that the greatest threat to democracy is now from a technocratic oligarchy at the top and not from revolution from below.

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