Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a sect. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions. A simple but effective introduction to a concept students really ought to understand before they graduate high school.
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.
“Architect, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
As regular readers of this blog may know, I have been trying for a number of years to develop a set of materials, particularly for my social studies classes (which I am no longer teaching at the moment), based on the methods articulated by Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler in The Writing Revolution (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017). Even though I have never had a chance to actually teach writing (which was done directly in none of the schools in which I have served in New York City; teachers assign writing work, but don’t really teach students how to write), I have been interested in doing so since I began my career 22 years ago. Now that I am about to retire, I see that I will probably never teach writing, and I probably won’t further develop my store of materials based on The Writing Revolution.
I’ve read enough about curriculum and curriculum design to know that I don’t care much for curricula that aren’t at once scaffolded and flexible. Most are not. But The Writing Revolution is the best thing of its kind I’ve encountered; I knew the first time I read the book that I would want to develop a curriculum based on its methods. It is scaffolded and flexible.
Two years ago, I was finally able to focus on working on these materials. It’s a lot of stuff, and I stipulate that it is uneven at best. Nonetheless–and I think now is a good time to remind users of this blog that most of what you’ll find here is set in Microsoft Word, therefore it is highly convertible and manipulable–I think some of this stuff is worth putting out there. I should also mention that I created a plethora of templates and supports–mostly typed verbatim from the book itself–for developing curricular materials consistent with The Writing Revolution’s prescribed methods.
At the time I began work on this stuff, sometime late in 2018, I thought it might me most useful for my freshman global studies class. This was for a number of reasons, the most salient among them that the New York State Regents Exam in Global Studies was notoriously challenging, and that the student population I served, everyone in my school at the time knew, really struggled with that particular test. But I also wanted to get students writing on their own, and to use language in ways that they otherwise wouldn’t–one of the principal strengths of The Writing Revolution in my opinion.
For global studies, I conceived of strands of work that followed a conceptual and factual arc across a relatively short, but dense and mildly challenging, series of documents. So, without further ado (and with apologies for the ado thus proffered), I offer the documents for Strand Three. This strand would concern agriculture and the earliest cities, but so far, as the lesson plan for Strand Three will show you, I only managed to pull together worksheets on agriculture and crop rotation. These are “developing questions” worksheets: they call upon students to read short passages of text, then develop a question or questions based on what they’ve read. The teachers copy of the agriculture as well as for the worksheet on crop rotation should help make the purpose of this work, and its methods, clearer.
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 end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.
Here is a worksheet on the verb pay when followed by an object and an infinitive.
You’ll need to pay him to clean your garage.
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.
“self-regulation: The ability to regulate and monitor a person’s own actions and behavior. Problems with effective self-regulation are a primary struggle for students with attention and executive function problems.
Effective self-regulation depends on a complex interaction of thinking, feeling, and perception.
Problems with self-regulation may stem from many different sources. Individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder typically have problems with self-regulation due to underlying brain processing difficulties with memory, attention, and executive function, particularly as these affect the ability to control impulses and restrain and monitor internal thoughts. Problems with self-regulation also may be caused by other psychological conditions, such as bipolar disorder, conduct disorders, or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Development of more effective ways to self-regulate is part of an effective coaching and strategy development program for individuals with ADHD. In general, while self-regulation may be seen as an underlying brain function, it is also learned behavior. Therefore, it is possible to teach individuals how to change patterns of impulsive and reckless behavior.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on science fiction. This is a half-page document with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. A concise, symmetrical introduction to this literary genre.
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.
“Deadwood (noun): Useless or expendable words that add nothing to clarity or meaning; verbiage; redundancy. See also VERBALISM.
‘Overly specific’ is inferior to “over specific,” as “inside of her” is to “inside her”; deadwood is always undesirable. John Simon. Paradigms Lost'”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Greek word roots gen/o, -gene, and -genesis. These, as you have probably inferred, carry several meanings: “production,” “formation,” “generation,” “origin,” “cause,” “birth,” “kind,” and “race.” These roots grow into such high-frequency English words as carcinogen, congenital, and genocide, all of which are included in this scaffolded worksheet.
I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the adjective prenatal, which I hoped, perhaps vainly and foolishly, would point the way toward the meanings of these word roots.
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.
“Jorge Amado: (1912-2001) Brazilian novelist. Born and reared on a cacao plantation, he published his first novel at 20. His early works, including The Violent Land (1942), explore the exploitation of suffering of plantation workers. Despite imprisonment and exile for leftist activities, he continued to produce novels, many of which have been banned in Brazil and Portugal. Later works such as Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon (1958), Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (1966), and The War of the Saints (1993) preserve Amado’s political attitude in their more subtle satire.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
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