The following is based off of: Grammar and Usage for Better Writing. What is the difference between a dog and that short, white dog? Dog means any dog at all. The words that, short, and white modify (change) the meaning of dog from any dog to a specific dog. These words are called adjectives. An [...]
Tag: education
Top 25 Things You Need to Know to Pass the GED Reading and Language Arts Test
The following is adapted from the book Language Arts Workbook for the GED Test. I highly recommend it for study, as it has plenty of realistic practice question with explanations. Main Idea: Identify the main idea of a paragraph or passage. Structural Relationships: Distinguish between cause-and-effect, compare-and-contrast, and parallel relationships. Follow the sequence of events [...]
Do you really make an impact?
After already living out most of my college career, it was time for my high school best friend to pick the college of her dreams. She had narrowed it down to two choices. Since I lived in the dorms, I didn't get to visit her as often as I used to. But now it was [...]
MyOn: A Review
Bottom Line: The children's e-book site MyOn is enjoyable, in the way a bowl of sugary cereal is. There are reasons to be cautious about it. MyOn promises to spread literacy by offering any kid with an internet connection access to more than 20,000 books. But how does it stack up? Every review [...]
Reading the room
Master teachers, when mentoring their newest crop, always zoom in on the power of reading and reacting to the energy levels of the classroom. As a teacher, you have a great deal of control over the students' energy levels. When it's low, it's a good idea to get students to move around and do [...]
What happens when you let students and teachers be free?
Lately, there has been a switch from English classes focused on critical readings, mini-lessons and writing workshops to standardized composition courses. My latest visit with my former English teacher left me with a palatable sense that he feels his freedom is gone and he's now trapped. The times when he would scour first his home [...]
What is the foundation of your job?
It's important to have existential crises sometimes. When authors come and use a sledgehammer on society's institutions, it makes me wonder: What is the foundation for my work? What can be stripped from it and still be recognizable? In The Trial, Franz Kafka presents us with a simple premise: What if someone got arrested without [...]
Give it up for flexible seating!
It's sometimes too easy to criticize the state of education and so I want to mix things up with a positive educational trend: flexible seating. I'm writing on the subject in the hope that it becomes the norm rather than a novelty. The benefits I see to flexible seating come from my experience as a [...]
Welcome and Introduction!
Hello everyone! If you are reading this, I first want to say thank you for giving me a chance 🙂 For now, this blog will be anonymous and so my job in this post is to make myself sound as credible as possible without giving too much of myself away. I am currently an Instructional [...]