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.

The Mississippi River

Posted on November 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on the Mississippi River along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This is a relatively short reading, but packs a lot of facts into a short introduction to the Mighty Mississippi, as do most of the one-page reading from the Intellectual Devotional series. It’s one of the reasons I developed so many of these, and why you find so many of them on this blog.

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.

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Alan Turing Brings the Snark

Posted on November 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

[Loud comment about computer intelligence, made in an AT&T cafeteria:] “No, I’m not interested in developing a more powerful brain. All I’m after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.”

Alan Turing, Quoted in Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence (1983)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Word Root Exercise: Cyt/o, -Cyte

Posted on November 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the Greek word roots cyt/o and -cyte. They mean, simply, cell. The most commonly used words to my eye on this worksheet (which also, if the book from which I adapted this is credible, tend to appear on the SAT and other high-stakes, college gatekeeping tests), are cytoplasm and lymphocyte. If you have students looking down the road at a career in the healthcare professions, this might be a useful document. If not, not (as Gertrude Stein once said).

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Cossacks

Posted on November 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

Because I can’t ever remember hearing them mentioned once in 11 years of teaching global studies in New York State, I wonder if there exists any use at all, anywhere in the United States, for this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Cossacks. They are, or were, an important group of warriors and horsemen in Russia. Recently, they’ve made a comeback as part of a constellation of groups whose raison d’etre, as far as I can determine, is to extol the virtuous leadership Vladimir Putin and promote Great Russian cultural chauvinism.

This is a half-page worksheet with a symmetrical relationship between reading and comprehension questions: a three-sentence reading, 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.

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The Master and Margarita

Posted on November 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

“The Master and Margarita: (Russian title: Master i Margarita). A novel by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940), combining dark humor, satire, fantasy and philosophy. It was completed in 1938, but not published in Russia until 1966-7 (in serial form); the English edition was published in 1967. In the 1930s the Devil visits Moscow, and, with the aid of a naked girl and a gun-toting, cigar-smoking, man-sized cat, spreads chaos and mayhem and shows up the moral inadequacies of Soviet society. Standing apart from all this is the Master, a novelist of great integrity, and his beloved, Margarita. He is writing a book about the appearance of Jesus before Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, long sections of which are included by Bulgakov. The book is prefaced by quotation from Goethe’s Faust.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Term of Art: Team Teaching

Posted on November 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

“team teaching: An instructional method in which two or more teachers collaboratively teach a group of students. Teaching teams may teach one subject to multiple classes or teach all the core subjects to a single cluster of students for the school year. In the former arrangement, teachers may take turns instructing the entire group or divide the class into smaller sections that rotate between the teachers. In the latter arrangement, teachers meet frequently to plan curriculum and address student strengths and weaknesses.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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A List of Consciousness-Raising Questions for Students

Posted on November 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

One of the great pleasures of the institution in which I now serve is the seriousness with which professional development is conducted. I won’t belabor the point about the hasty superficiality with which this responsibility was fulfilled in other schools (I’ve done this elsewhere on this blog) and its reduction to a pro forma bureaucratic ritual. We’ve been asked to read Dr, Gholdy Muhammad’s recent–and excellent–book Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy.  It’s a welcome relief from the usual pabulum that passes as professional development in the school system in which I serve.

In any case, here is a list of consciousness-raising questions I grabbed from page 72 of the edition of the book supplied me. I wrote this for my planning book; however, it could easily (like about 99 percent of what you’ll find on Mark’s Text Terminal, this is a Microsoft Word document that you may, if I dare to say so, bend to your will) be converted into a worksheet or a series of worksheets.

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.

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Blog Post 5,000: A Tentative Beginning to a Unit on Writing Reviews

Posted on October 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

In six years plus of this blog, I have finally reached the 5,000-post mark. Post Number 5,000 is a set of documents that I began toward developing a unit on writing reviews some years ago while working in an ill-fated middle school in the North Bronx.

For now, however, here are the basic, undeveloped documents for this unit. Here is a a tentative unit plan, which is still mostly in template form. Likewise this lesson-plan template and this worksheet template. Here is a a glossary of critical terms  for writing film reviews. This is a start on the first worksheet of the unit.

Finally, here is a list of aesthetic criteria for evaluating cultural products. Let me mention in passing that this is for teacher use; the one time I taught kids to write reviews, I made sure that they made, with proper guidance, their own lists of aesthetic criteria for the media or event they were criticizing.

You may want to check back here later, as I am in the process of developing this long-neglected unit.

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.

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Foreshadowing

Posted on October 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Foreshadowing: The technique of arranging events and information in a narrative in such a way that later events are prepared for or shadowed forth beforehand. A well-constructed novel, for instance, will suggest at the very beginning what the outcome may be; the end is contained in the beginning, and this gives structural and thematic unity.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

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Spontaneous (adj)

Posted on October 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

Last but not least on this dark Friday morning, here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective spontaneous. This is a high-frequency word in English, so it is one students should know, at the bare minimum (if you’ll indulge me while I ride on my high horse this morning), but the time 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.

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