Over the years, I have become convinced of the utility of teaching the parts of speech in order to build literacy in general, and in particular to assist students in developing their own understanding of how to write grammatically complete, syntactically meaningful, and stylish sentences. To that end, I have developed units for each of the parts of speech, and these constitute an almost-year-long cycle of English Language Arts instruction.
So, this weeks text is the first lesson of the first unit of this cycle, on nouns. This lesson calls upon students to use this teacher-authored reading passage to identify all the nouns in it; as you will see, this is a three-part scaffold that asks students to read, then apply their understanding of nouns, first in modified cloze exercises, then in writing sentences from subject to period. The lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy do-now exercise on syntax. You might also find useful this singular and plural nouns formation review
You’ll notice that the plan for this lesson doesn’t list the standards met. Because of the way I manage my work flow, I list all the standards on the overarching unit plan. (That way if I must print a lesson plan to appease a bureaucrat, I don’t burn too much ink.) For that reason, I have posted typescript copies of the Common Core Standards I use in my practice in the About Weekly Texts page that is above the banner photo on the home page for this site. They are in the penultimate paragraph there.
22 September 2016, Post Scriptum: I have just updated the singular and plural nouns formation review worksheet linked to above.
15 July 2022, Post Scriptum: I have revised the work for this lesson. The reading and worksheet now contains a reading from The Fight (Boston, MacMillan, 1975), Norman Mailer’s account of the legendary “Rumble in the Jungle” in 1974; it follows then that the teacher’s copy of the worksheet received an update as well.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Mark's Text Terminal 