Yearly Archives: 2016

The Weekly Text, April 15, 2016: Five Worksheets on the Homophones Son and Sun

Occasionally I get carried away developing certain kinds of instructional materials. Last fall, when I developed a large number of homophone worksheets while I was away from work for an extended civic responsibility, was no exception. I completed work on a large batch of these short exercises during that time, most of which were and are thought-provoking vocabulary builders and clarifiers.

However, the five worksheets for clarifying the use of the homophones son and sun don’t really fit that bill for the high schoolers I teach. This pair is too simple even for the struggling readers I teach. In fact, these worksheets impelled me to apologize to my students for insulting their intelligence. If you work in the elementary grades, or teach English language learners, these might be appropriate for your classroom. If you haven’t used these before, you’ll find the Homophone Worksheet Users’s Manual useful.

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.

If You Are an Educator in New York State….

Over the years I’ve developed the habit of keeping a copy of the New York State Code of Ethics for Teachers–the 5 x 8 card stock copy the state distributes–in my briefcase. I like this simple, elegantly written set of principles and think it is a nice guide for my planning and conduct as a teacher. The document speaks to (dare I say this in this era of open contempt for educators?) the essential nobility of our profession.

My old copy has become frayed, so I typed it up. Here, then, I offer you the New York State Code of Ethics for Teachers as a Microsoft Word typescript.

If you find typos in this document, 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.

Here Comes Everyone

I have always loved the euphony of the first sentence of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake (New York: Penguin, 1999).

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

The Weekly Text, April 8, 2016: Four Word Root Worksheets on the Latin Roots for Three, Four, Five, and Six

If you’re a math teacher working with struggling learners, you might find these four Latin word root worksheets for the numbers three, four, five, and six useful. Or, if you just want to build vocabulary quickly, I think these will serve your purpose. If these are the first word root worksheets from Mark’s Text Terminal you’ve used, the Word Root Worksheets Users’ Manual will help you with a suggested method for their use.

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.

On Civitas

“Teachers are more than any other class the guardians of civilization.”

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), as Quoted in The Teacher and the Taught (1963)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

The Weekly Text, April 1, 2016: A Lesson Plan on Alain Resnais’ Holocaust Documentary “Night and Fog”

Some years ago, I began working to build a unit that guided struggling learners through the process of writing a synthetic research paper. I knew it would have to be highly structured into a scaffold form, and would need to guide students through the process of postulating an argument, researching and reading, evaluating evidence, outlining, and citing sources in Modern Language Association style. Since our sophomore research paper topic at the time was the Holocaust, I designed my highly structured research paper unit around that dismal period of European history.

I’ve actually floated a book proposal to a small educational publisher for this unit; they passed, which persuaded me the unit requires more work before it’s publishable. Since then,  I’ve worked on refining this sprawling unit.

Do you know Alain Renais’ documentary on the Holocaust, Night and Fog? I first saw it as a student at Ray F. Sennett Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, and it shocked me; indeed, it was one of those educational “before and after” (like reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X or Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown) moments for me. Early on in planning this unit, I knew this film–which packs an amazing amount of information (and a number of shocking images) into its 32 minute running time–would serve as the opening lesson.

Here then is a complete lesson to attend a viewing of Night and Fog.

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.

How To Teach

“Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.”

Chinese Proverb

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

The Weekly Text, July 22, 2016: Three Context Clues Stemming from the Verb Perceive

A couple of weeks in Vermont always does me a world of good. This weeks Text is three context clues worksheets stemming from the verb perceive. If you haven’t previously used context clues worksheets from Mark’s Text Terminal, you might find the users’ manual for context clues worksheets helpful for working with them in your classroom.

It’s summer! This is the payoff for teachers, and I am collecting every minute I can.

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.

The Weekly Text, July 1, 2016: A Trove of Documents for a Professional Development Inquiry into Executive Skills

Are you done with the 2015-2016 school year? I gather that our school year here in New York City goes much later than other districts in the United States. Our last day was Tuesday the 28th.

So it’s summer break! I always schedule my share of fun for these months, but I also work some–because I want to. You can continue to look for the Weekly Text at Mark’s Text Terminal, because I only plan to miss three Fridays during the summer.

Over the years, as an employee of the New York City Department of Education, I’ve experienced a mixed bag of professional development sessions. A few years ago, at least in the school in which I presently serve, teachers were responsible for performing professional inquiry groups, which selected its own topic for, well, inquiry, and analysis, germane to the work we do, but obviously for improving pedagogy. For this week, then, here are–in three separate links–the raw materials for a professional development presentation on executive skills and function I wrote for the group I joined in the 2011-2012 school year.

First up are the the proposal for this inquiry group, and a learning support for teachers, which are the teacher’s materials for this presentation; second, here are four student surveys to assess executive skills; third, and finally, here is a letter explaining these surveys to students. I adapted the student surveys from Ellen Galinsky’s excellent book Mind in the Making.

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.

The Weekly Text, March 24, 2016: A Learning Support on the Use of Comparative and Superlative Adjectives

We’re off for Good Friday tomorrow, so I’m posting this week’s text this (Thursday) morning, so that I can spend the day doing something else besides looking at my computer screen–maybe looking at blue skies and budding trees.

So–very quickly–here is learning support on the formation of comparative and superlative adjectives that I use with a couple of lessons from my adjectives unit. As always, if you find it useful, I’d like to hear your comments.

And Happy Passover, Happy Easter, and Happy Spring!

If you find typos in this document, 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.