Category Archives: Independent Practice

This is material either specifically designed for or appropriate to use for what is more commonly known as “homework.”

The Weekly Text, December 13, 2019: A Lesson Plan on Placing Quotes in a Synthetic Research Paper

Okay, Friday has rolled around again, and it is the end of a momentous week for this author. To make a long story short, I now own a car for the first time in almost 17 years.

This week’s Text, from my ongoing endeavor to write a couple of units on the art of argumentation and the craft of composing a synthetic research paper, is a complete lesson plan on the art of quoting in a paper. I wrote this context clues worksheet on criterion and criteria, which are, respectively, a singular and a plural noun, specifically for this lesson. As I look at this document today, I realize that depending on how one deals with it, and who one is teaching, that this worksheet could stand on its own as a lesson (and I have one on datum and data in the works). Finally, here is the worksheet that is at the center of this lesson and affords students an opportunity to try their hands directly at quoting within a larger body of text.

That’s it! It’s Friday the 13th, so step lightly and carefully.

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: Roman a Clef

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the roman a clef. The worksheet explains the term and the concept it represents, but I’d still like to use it in roughly the same sentence I used when at age 17 I made my first pedantic statement: “Jack Kerouac’s On The Road is a roman a clef. ”

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.

A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Gang of Four”

OK, as I count down to the end of the year, I work on posting the first unit–24 lessons in all–of the work I developed to attend the Crime and Puzzlement books. To that end, here is lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Gang of Four.”

I begin this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the American idiom “burn the midnight oil.” This PDF of the illustration and questions drives the lesson; to solve the case, here is the typescript of the answer key.

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.

A Goal-Setting Form for Writing

This morning, after reading a few pages a day for a couple of months, I finally finished Martha Stone Wiske’s (she edited) excellent book Teaching for Understanding: Linking Practice with Research (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998). Like the National Research Council’s How People Learn, this book is a road map to the kind of deep conceptual teaching I yearn to do.

I grabbed this goal-setting form for writing from the book’s pages, if you can use it.

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.

Battle of Saratoga

If you need it, here is a reading on the Battle of Saratoga and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. This was an important moment in the American Revolution, and therefore am important moment in United States history.

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: Quid Pro Quo

If there is a better time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Latin phrase quid pro quo, I cannot imagine when that would be.

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.

ARPAnet

This reading on ARPAnet, which it will tell you, was the precursor to the Internet, has invariably been a high interest item for the students with whom I’ve worked over the years. Here is its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

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.

Way (n) and Weigh (vt/vi)

Snow falls heavily as I sit down to write this, so I’ll soon wrap up my day and leave to take advantage of this half day. Before I go, however, here are five homophone worksheets on the noun way and the verb weigh. Weigh, for the record, is used both transitively and intransitively.

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, December 6, 2019: A Lesson Plan on the Latin Word Root Bene

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Latin word root bene. It means good and well, and as you have probably already figured out, it turns up as the root of such common words in English as benefit and benevolent. This context clues worksheet on the noun welfare with which I intended deploy a hint to point students in the right direction (and also to hint at the idea that government welfare benefits, which so many families in our nation now receive, are meant to keep us, as individuals and as a society, good and well). Finally, here is the word root worksheet that is the mainstay of this lesson.

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: Weimar Republic

While its importance is undisputed, and indeed as a moment in cultural, social and political history it it rife with concepts students ought to understand, I nonetheless remain sceptical, based on my experience, that this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Weimar Republic will be useful to many social studies teachers. A

As always, if it is useful to you, I’d be very interested in hearing about that.

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.