Word Up

Carly Martin

16 Oct 2026 — 5 min read

Good morning team. Hope everyone is having an excellent Friday morning. If anyone would like to help me write one of the 4 assignments I have due, please reach out.

Word of the Day

Get ready to learn folks. I'm introducing a recurring segment in which I give everyone a vocab word of the day. One of the classes I'm taking this semester is about language development and literacy for kids who do not speak English as a first language and now all I'm thinking about are strategies to improve English fluency.

I have recently learned it takes seeing and hearing a new word 15-20 times in context in order to comprehend its meaning. So, I better see everyone using this one in the comments to solidify your learning.

If you want, you can employ the 7-step method developed by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for teaching vocab to multi-lingual learners. The 7 steps are as f0llows:

Teacher says word aloud, students repeat x3
Teacher says word in context of 'mentor text' (whatever written material they're looking at that day - slides, informational writing, primary source docs, etc.)
Teacher provides dictionary definition
Teacher provides student-friendly definition
Teacher highlights features of the word - tense, prefixes, polysemous, cognates
Teacher engages students in oral activities in pairs to develop word concept/knowledge
Teacher reminds students how word will be used in class context

I did this in 6th grade this week with the word 'hearth' while we were discussing early humans and the Paleolithic era in social studies. Here's your word for the week:

Cogitate \ verb : consider carefully and deeply; reflect upon; turn over in one’s mind.

Origin: derived from the Latin word cōgitāre, meaning "to think".
Synonyms: ponder, consider, contemplate

"The girl took the weekend to cogitate on whether she should attempt to see Harry Styles in NYC before his residency ends."

Please leave your sentence using cogitate in the comments. I will be grading for word comprehension and grammar.

MTEL Me the Answer

This week, and for many weeks at this point, I have been unsuccessfully trying to study for the history MTEL in order to get my teaching license. The MTELs are Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure and are 4-hour, multiple choice based tests that are supposed to assess your general knowledge in a subject area. The history one is meant to cover any history or social studies content you could possibly cover between 5th and 12th grade and is next to impossible to study for if you don't have savant level knowledge of world history events. The best advice I've gotten from professors and other folks who have taken it is to just get a like 'history of the world' fact book and just memorize as much as possible. Insane that I spend so much time in grad school classes discussing the validity of assessment for this to be the required route to getting a teaching license, but, I digress.

I need other people to know how insane is and the breadth of material you need to know in order to pass. Here are a few questions, all from the same practice test that I have been using from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's website. See if you can get any of these.

Which of the following developments in the history of China was accomplished during the Qin dynasty?

a. founding mercantile colonies in Central Asia.

b. unifying China by subduing warring factions.

c. establishing protectorates over Korea and Manchuria.

d. constructing canal systems linking the North to tropical southern China.

The flourishing of arts and learning in the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is best understood as a result of the:

a. patronage by Islamic rulers to enhance their prestige.

b. state support of Sufi missionary activity.

c. revival of overland trade along the Silk Road.

d. influence of European secularism on Islamic thought.

3. Which of the following goals best describes a shared intention of the leaders of the English Civil War of the 1640s and the Glorious Revolution of 1688?

a. setting limits on the exercise of monarchical power.

b. promoting popular participation in the political process.

c. establishing an Anglican religious commonwealth.

d. reducing the wealth and influence of the merchant class.

4. Which of the following statements best describes a shared feature of Italian Fascism and German National Socialism?

a. both drew their greatest support from large industrial corporations.

b. both made denunciation of the Treaty of Versailles a central part of their political appeal.

c. both represented an expression of extreme nationalism.

d. both embraced a racist ideology that called for the elimination of specific groups.

5. Changes that have taken place in the Chinese economy since 1960 best illustrate which of the following economic transformations?

a. how a pure market economy became a command economy

b. how a command economy became a mixed economy

c. how a traditional economy became a command economy

d. how a mixed economy became a pure market economy

Answers: 1-B, 2-A, 3-A, 4-C, 5-B

Do you see what I mean? Like, I love history and I am having a bad time. If anyone has tips on how to develop a photographic memory quickly, please let me know. Additionally, if you have a fav history fact, or period of history you'd like to info-dump to me about, please hmu.