Category Archives: English Language Arts

This category contains domain-specific material–reading and writing expository prose, interpreting literature etc.–designed to meet the Common Core standards in English language arts while at the same time being flexible enough to meet the needs of diverse and idiosyncratic learners.

Cultural Literacy: Role Model

As I have always thought role modeling is an important element of any teaching practice, I think this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a role model is a bit overdue. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of four straightforward sentences and three comprehension questions.

This document might be modified into a full-page worksheet with some critical questions about who might best be characterized as role model. In terms of design, the worksheet looks a bit crowded to me. It is, like just about everything on Mark’s Text Terminal, formatted in Microsoft Word for ease of adaptation, editing, or whatever else you might want to do with it for benefit of your students.

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.

Dialogue

“Dialogue (noun): Conversation between two or more people, or the literary representation of direct speech; quoted utterance; a work written entirely in the form of a colloquy, especially in philosophy; and exchange of ideas or opinions. Adjective: dialogic; adverb: dialogically.

‘He was for long thought to write very bad English, and indeed he gave you the impression or writing with the stub of a blunt pencil; his style was labored, an uneasy mixture of the classical and the slangy, and his dialogue as such that could never have issued from the mouth of a human being.’ W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

The Weekly Text, 3 April 2026: The Writing Revolution Learning Supports III; Transition Words and Phrases Learning Support

This week’s Text is a simple one, to wit this learning support on transition words and phrases. This is, as the header for this post indicates, part of a series of posts on material related to Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler’s The Writing Revolution (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017) and the methods of writing instruction therein.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Emma Lazarus

Last but not least for Women’s History Month 2026, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Emma Lazarus. She wrote, as you may know, “The New Colossus,” the poem that visitors to the Statue of Liberty find at her base. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences, and the poem itself, and three comprehension questions.

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.

Adrienne Rich

“Adrienne (Cecile) Rich: (1929-2012) U.S. poet, scholar, and critic. Born in Baltimore, she was a student at Radcliffe College when her poems were chosen for publication in the Yale Younger Poets series; the resulting volume, A Change of World (1951), reflected her formal mastery. Her subsequent work traces a transformation from well-crafted but imitative poetry to a highly personal and powerful style. Her increasing commitment to the women’s movement and a lesbian/feminist aesthetic came to politicize much of her work. Among her collections are Diving into the Wreck (1973, National Book Award) and The Dream of a Common Language (1978). Her nonfiction Of Woman Born (1976, National Book Award) was widely read.”

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Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Cultural Literacy: Doris Lessing

She’s not exactly primary or secondary school material, but here, nonetheless, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Doris Lessing. This is a half-page document with a reading of two longish, but not insurmountable, sentences and two comprehension questions. Anyone at the level at which I teach with an interest in Doris Lessing shouldn’t have any problem with this document.

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.

The Weekly Text, 27 March 2026, Women’s History Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Agrippina

For the final Friday of Women’s History Month 2026, here is a reading on Agrippina with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. She probably doesn’t figure in curricula anywhere, but I can imagine that she must–because she was a real piece of work–be of interest to students of certain intellectual proclivities.

Because she did murder her husband, the Emperor Claudius.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Esther

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Esther, the Old Testament figure and book in her name. People of the Jewish faith hold the festival of Purim in her honor.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Betsy Ross

Frankly, I am hard pressed to imagine that there is any demand for this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Betsy Ross. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and one comprehension question. I think I learned in grade school about her–primarily through her association with sewing the first United States flag–for which, this reading asserts, there is no documentation.

Every once in a while, I post something that I think is filler. This might be one of those.

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.

Radclyffe Hall

“Radclyffe Hall: originally Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall (1880-1943) English writer. Born to a wealthy family and educated at King’s College, London, Hall began here literary career by writing verses, which eventually were collected in five volumes. She won prizes for her novel Adam’s Breed (1926), a plea for animal rights. She was condemned for writing openly and sympathetically about lesbianism in The Well of Loneliness (1928), one of the first lesbian novels in English. It was judged obscene and banned in Britain; the ban was overturned on appeal after Hall’s death. Most of her five other novels express her strong Christian belief.”

­­­­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.