Lesson Links by Irv Leskowitz - September 2004
Filling in the blanks | More vocabulary expanders | Spelling Challenge | Rhyming | Something different


PREPOSTIONS OF TIME

Have your student complete the sentences with prepositions of time: at; in; on; from…to.

1. I wake up ___ seven o’clock.              

2. He was born ___1987.                         

3. We don’t have class ___Sunday.         

4. I do my homework ___night.  

5. She works ___ 9:00 A.M. ___ 3:00 P.M.     

6. Their class starts ___ 8:30 A.M.      

7. We have an appointment ___ 1:00 o’clock.

As usual, this lesson can easily adapted to your student’s level and needs.

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FILLING IN THE BLANKS

Missing words: conference; definition; finance; indifferently; possess; presidency; referee; refine; resident; subside; transfer; unfinished.

1. Glenn was short of money, so he decided to _____ the new car.

2. Sam attended a two-day educational _____ about naval history.

3. His father’s excellent promotion allowed Jim to ____ to the University of Michigan.

4. Alice learned that the term of the ____ of the society would last two years.

5. Bonnie had been a _____ of Philadelphia for ten years.

6. Harry returned to his office on Saturday to complete the ____ paperwork for the project.

7. Since Maura did not feel hungry, she looked at her dinner plate rather ____.

8. Can you guess how many books the school’s library will _____ at the end of the year?

9. Paul needed to___ his speech and shorten its length for the presentation.

10. Puzzled by the new word, Dan had to look up the ____ in the dictionary.

11. Every Sunday afternoon, Nora’s dad volunteers as a _____ for her soccer games.

12. The weather channel predicted that high winds would ____ about midnight.

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MORE VOCABULARY EXPANDERS

Match the word in Column A with the definition in Column B and the antonym in Column C.

Column A

Column B Column C
concise  adj. cautious, suspicious      liking, inclination
flimsy  adj.   calm, still, quiet reckless, careless
lull  v.   fear, aversion, anxiety sturdy, solid
phobia  n.  short, to the point excite, arouse
wary  adj.  shabby, feeble, weak wordy, rambling


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SPELLING CHALLENGE

Each sentence has one mispelled word, including this one.

    1. Jenny was able to learn any musical insturment in months.
    2. The antique chair came into Henry’s posession as a gift from his grandmother.
    3. Jack could not tell the diffrence between a Windsor desk and a harpsichord.
    4. Sara’s chief ocupation was quilting using ornate cotton fabrics.
    5. Every successfull writer has a painstaking editor.

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RHYMING

This exercise will help your student grasp the concept of rhyming – if he/she doesn’t already understand it.  This poem, one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s, is a simple one that illustrates rhyming very nicely.  “Learning” poems was a large part of my early education; do they still make students memorize and recite poetry today?

                        BED IN SUMMER

In winter I get up at _____.
And dress by yellow ________
In summer, quite the other _____,
I have to go to bed by _____.

Choose the rhyming words from this list: 
evening time; morning time; candle-light; way; day; night, noontime.

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AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT…

As a change of pace, here are some literacy-related books.

  • Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynn Truss 
    (Thanks to Diana Grubbs for this one.)
    Some thoughts on the importance of punctuation.
  • Grammar is a Gentle Sweet Song, Erik Orsenna
    Some thoughts on the lives of words.
  • The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith
    (plus four additional books in a series)
    These last five books are excellent for reading to your student or for having your student read to you.                

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