Category Archives: Independent Practice

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

Sitting Bull

For the penultimate blog post of 2018, here is a reading on Sioux warrior and chieftain Sitting Bull along with the comprehension worksheet that accompanies it.

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: Have an Ax to Grind

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Have an ax to grind.” This seems like a term that users of social media ought to have at their disposal–you know? But this is also a term used often in educated and even scholarly discourse to describe tendentiousness in inquiry.

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.

Independent Practice: The Battle of Tours-Poitiers

You know, despite the fact that it is a turning point in global history, I can’t even remember why I wrote this independent practice worksheet on the Battle of Tours-Poitiers. In the freshman global studies classes I co-taught in New York, I don’t recall ever–aside from a cursory mention of Charles Martel somewhere in the mix–covering this explicitly.

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.

Prohibition

Lately, I’ve worked to create a broad spectrum literacy course that will appeal to or reach as many students as possible. This reading on Prohibition and the comprehension worksheet are part of this endeavor.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Hydro-

You might find that this worksheet on the Greek word root hydr/o–it means, unsurprisingly, water, but also hydrogen and liquid–helps students quickly build a lexicon of key vocabulary words to use across the common branch domains, and especially the physical sciences.

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 “Fragment”

Here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Fragment.” Suffice it to say that this is the first of many of these.

I’ve put up a couple of these before, and traffic to them is consistent. For this one, here is the Cultural Literacy do-now exercise on the idiom “An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure.” From the book itself, here is a PDF of the illustration of the evidence with the questions students will consider in analysis and contemplation as they resolve the crime. Finally, here is teacher’s answer key to this case.

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 Student Self-Assessment and Reflection Tool

This student self-assessment and reflection form has been kicking around my to-do folder for a couple of years now for a couple of reasons. The first is that I could never determine the best way to categorize and tag it (and I post it now because I have decided to take a much more casual attitude toward categories and gags, mostly because I realized this blog has a search function); the second is that this material, I am confident, remains solidly in the authors’ copyright.

Who are, to wit, Jay McTighe and Carol Ann Tomlinson. The book is Integrating Differentiated Instruction & Understanding by Design (Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2006). If you’re interested in curriculum design in general and in particular, in this case differentiating for struggling or idiosyncratic learners (or both), you probably know the names of these two distinguished experts. The book is excellent: I read it twice, taking extensive notes both times. Then I passed it along to assistant principal under whom I served. Every time I visited his office, I noticed that the book was close at hand.

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.

Beatlemania

That the students I serve took the interest they did in this reading on Beatlemania came as a surprise to me. Here also is a worksheet to aid comprehension.

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: Archetype

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on archetype as it is generally conceptualized; it’s nice to see–however brief–the excursus on Carl Jung’s psychology in this passage.

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.

Peak (n) and Peek (n/vi)

Moving right along: if your students need help differentiating them, here are five worksheets on the homophones peak and peek. You probably already know this, but peek as a verb is used only 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.