Words to liven up the month of July

by | Jul 23, 2017 | Language Arts

• cockamamie = trivial, having very little importance or meaning; ridiculous, not making any sense or lacking plausibility • contumely = insulting, scornful, or contemptuous language or treatment; an openly insulting, scornful, or contemptuous remark • fete = a large...

Words to Liven Up Your Vocabulary This Month

by | May 11, 2017 | Language Arts

• absquatulate = abscond, to leave, especially in a hurry or under suspicious circumstances • affray = a fight or noisy disturbance in a public place • anencephalous = congenital absence of part or all of the brain • argle-bargle = a lively discussion •...

The Writer’s Toolbox

by | Apr 3, 2011 | Language Arts, Speech and Debate

What’s in your toolbox? A writer’s toolbox would be incomplete without a variety of rhetorical devices. Rhetorical devices were first examined by the rhetoricians of ancient Greece. Writers and speakers have been honing these devices ever since in their search for...

What do these sentences have in common?

by | Jul 22, 2009 | Language Arts

Don’t nod. Dogma: I am God. Never odd or even. Do geese see God? Too bad I hid a boot. Rats live on no evil star. No trace; not one carton. Murder for a jar of red rum. Some men interpret nine memos. May a moody baby doom a yam? A man, a plan, a canal. Panama!...

Benjamin Franklin Method

by | Apr 6, 2009 | Language Arts

I am having a hard time finding essays that are well written for my students to “practice” the Benjamin Franklin method of reading, outlining, and rewriting from outline [page 399 of Teaching the Trivium]. Any suggestions that are easy to do today? Thanks...