From Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column on the Supreme Court: “Samuel Alito’s antediluvian draft opinion is the Puritans’ greatest victory since they expelled Roger Williams from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.”
"Antediluvian" (original meaning "before the Biblical flood") now connotes "old and tired thinking," but helping students understand it combines that connotation with a bit of discussion about the flood, Noah, etc. You don't need to study the Bible to get the point -- and you might be able to use a context clue if you have some knowledge of early American history. But I was thinking I might need another five minutes just to fill in high school juniors about Puritans and Roger Williams.
Bottom line: Dowd does not write for high school readers, but we can keep pushing those high school readers to expand their catalog of vocabulary and allusions (both historical and literary).
A sports description of note was found in Joe Drape’s vivid account of Rich Strike’s against-all-odds win in the Kentucky Derby. Drape described the winning burst of the winning steed, jockeyed by Sonny Leon, this way: “Leon started guiding his horse through the pack, zigzagging like someone late for work on a busy Manhattan sidewalk.”
You don't need to spend time in New York to understand maneuvering through a busy sidewalk.
There has been a lot written lately about Real Madrid's "magical soccer season." NYT sports writer Rory Smith wrote that it’s not “too florid, too ethereal, to suggest that Real Madrid does not so much beat teams at soccer as overwhelm them by harnessing some elemental force.” He went on to add, “At times, it resembles a form of alchemy, the transformation of a succession of base metals — a smattering of garlanded veterans, a couple of raw hopefuls, a coach with an expressive eyebrow and an easy charm, a team with no recognizable, cogent plan beyond a pervasive sense of its own destiny — into something precious.”
This extended description is over the top, which is not unusual for soccer writers. It's not a sport that fits into neatly timed pieces, and a large percentage of enjoyment for true fans is found in things beyond final scores, or scores at all -- which can be quite few.
Soccer commentary often reads as poetry, and the top players create poetry with their actions on the pitch. This physical poetry happens throughout sports, of course, even in brutal American football, but perhaps it's all that time needing to be filled while teams battle for midfield position that allows for announcers to stretch their descriptive powers a bit.
A casual soccer fan such as myself might note that a team having no "recognizable, cogent plan" seems like what all soccer teams share. Goals can be quite sudden but often one team is far superior to another and still only wins by one goal... with that goal resulting from a long series of choices and mistakes and unrelenting pressure. Discrete plays are not part of the soccer experience, other than "set plays" and penalty kicks.
Even in this short passage, I would need to review vocabulary like "florid," "ethereal," "alchemy," "garlanded," and "cogent." Dedicated readers may have encountered all those words in various novels but none of those are words teens normally rely upon in daily conversations.
We could also work on getting clues from context, as with the simple appositive "the transformation of a succession of base metals" supplying lots of help for "alchemy." Students would need a nudge to recognize "garlanded," I would think, as even the modern Olympics do not feature garlands placed on winners' heads.
And a quick discussion about the root of "cogent" and a more common term like "recognize" would be worth a minute.
When I was just starting as a teacher I would wonder how to fill a class period. Once I discovered that kids could learn a lot of vocabulary and content from simply analyzing some cool sentences or paragraphs, I wondered how I could possibly fit everything in each day.
It's so much better to have an overabundance of material.
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