Wacky Wednesday – Mixed Up Words

My daughter has been complaining to me about people confusing the words ancestor and descendant. (Like her mother, she is a little in love with words.) Unlike the chicken and egg question, we can be absolutely sure that ancestors come before descendants in any timeline on our planet, just as ancestor would precede descendant in the dictionary. Think about the family tree they show in the front of an intergenerational novel: The first Devonhams (ancestors) are listed at the top and the most recent arrivals (descendants) are at the bottom of the page. The descendants are the result of DNA coming DOWN the line or DESCENDING from way back in history to the modern descendants.

Autumn Leaves (or Cactus Needles) & How to Last Through an Endless Test

Is it Fall yet? Although I have lived in Arizona for a while now, I still am having some difficulty remembering the timing of events in my recent past because seasons here are so subtle. I can’t even use the startup of school as a familiar marker because our kids go back to school weeks earlier than I am used to; some of them start back in mid-summer. On the whole, I think this sort of schedule is fine, but it throws off my sense of time and seasons. As a native of Wisconsin, I found the idea of attending football games in blazing heat odd enough in Virginia. I can’t even imagine a football game here on a scorching October day. Lucky for me I am a basketball fan. (GO SUNS!)

Anyway, it is Fall and kids are again taking PSAT and SAT tests and making up or retaking AIMS tests, and there are a lot of complaints about tests that take hours (the SAT lasts almost four hours). How do kids keep from fading in the stretch? I tell my students to eat a good solid breakfast (including some protein and complex carbohydrates rather than sugar) and take a snack. Be sure you get plenty of sleep the night before. (Believe me, cramming at the last minute is less helpful than getting enough sleep.) And don’t sign up for the test on Homecoming Weekend if you can possibly avoid it.

SAT Word of the Week

Anomaly

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXOXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

An anomaly (noun) is an irregularity, something that doesn’t fit in, like the illustration above of one lonely O in a sea of X’s. The adjective form is anomalous.