Category Archives: Independent Practice

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

Cultural Literacy: The Puritans

Here, on a rainy, warm Tuesday morning, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Puritans, the zealots who settled this country, and whose intellectual and spiritual descendants are still trying to tell the rest of us how to live our lives.

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 Short Exercise on the Greek Word Root Hepat/o

Here is a short worksheet on the Greek word root hepat/o. It means liver. This is another word root from which many words used in the health care professions: you want to avoid hepatitis, and pay attention when your doctor orders a hepatic panel.

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, January 19, 2018: A Complete Lesson Plan on Using Coordinating Conjunctions

OK, it’s Friday again, and like everybody else, I guess, I anticipate the weekend with relief.

This week’s Text is a complete lesson plan on using coordinating conjunctions. I begin this lesson with this homophone worksheet on the the noun council and counsel used as both noun and a verb. If this lesson runs into a second day (I always plan for a variety of contingencies in a class period), here is–courtesy of the generous folks at Education World, where you can get a year-long supply of these exercises–an Everyday Edit exercise on Banned Books Week. The mainstay of this lesson is this scaffolded worksheet that guides students through the use of coordinating conjunctions. Finally, you’ll probably find helpful the teacher’s copy of the 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.

Cultural Literacy: Nuremberg Trials

Here, on a chilly Thursday morning in Manhattan, is a Cultural Literacy Worksheet on the Nuremberg Trials. I can think of a number of places and subjects in which a high school teacher could use this short worksheet.

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 Short Exercise on the Greek Word Root Erythr/o

Here is a short exercise on the Greek word root erythr/o; it means red. This is another of those roots that grows a lot of words used in the health professions.

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.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2018

I’m old enough to remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in life and in death. Indeed, I remember vividly that April day in 1968–I was in third grade–when a career criminal named James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. King while he was in Memphis assisting sanitation workers in their quest to be treated with basic human dignity by that municipal government. As confused and conflicted as my parents’ political principles were, they respected Dr. King, and admired the work he was doing. My father, as I recall (remember: I was eight years old, so some of this stuff was a little over my head), was particularly demoralized by Dr. King’s murder, and saw it as a sign, along with the horrors of the Vietnam War, of encroaching barbarism.

Today, we observe the anniversary of Dr. King’s work. Here is  a reading on the practice of nonviolent resistance, which was the cornerstone of Dr. King’s strategy in his fight for civil rights for Americans of African descent. You might want to use this comprehension worksheet to accompany it. Finally, here is a piece of work I consider timely–especially considering this report on inequality in schools in the United States that came over the transom yesterday–to wit, this Cultural literacy worksheet on de facto segregation.

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, January 12, 2018: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Inventor of Basketball, James Naismith

Springfield, Massachusetts, is the home of The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. I lived in Northern New England on and off for years, and I went to college in Amherst, Massachusetts, so I passed through Springfield many times in my travels. Each time, I noticed the Basketball Hall of Fame and wondered how it ended up in Springfield–of all places–and not in one of the bigger cities on the East Coast.

As it happens, the game was invented in Springfield by a man named James Naismith. Most of the young men I teach are interested in basketball, so your students may be as well. In any case, this week’s Text is a reading on James Naismith along with this comprehension worksheet to complement it. You might also find useful this Everday Edit worksheet on Basketball’s Beginnings (courtesy of the good people at Education World). Finally, and to risk making this whole post ephemeral by its tangents, here is a Culture Literacy exercise on the noun expletive, because it is used in the third Additional Fact in the reading.

Incidentally (and as the reading will explain to you and your students), the game of basketball in its original form prescribed 13 rules. A couple of years ago, I noticed that Sotheby’s had auctioned off James Naismith’s holograph manuscript of those original 13 rules for $4.3 million.

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 Greek Word Root Checklist for Students in the Healthcare Professions

While I work in Lower Manhattan, I live way up in the the North Bronx. So, I have a long commute every day. Whether I take the 2 or the 5 train, I pass by 149th Street and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. The post office at that intersection has a Ben Shahn Mural in it; across the street is Hostos Community College, named after legendary Puerto Rican educator Eugenia Maria de Hostos and a part of our City’s respected engine of social mobility, The City University of New York, or CUNY.

Often, I will see Hostos students on the train, and I am aware that many of them are nursing students by virtue of the fact that they are wearing scrubs. The other thing that gives them away is their attention to their Greek word root flashcards, or by the fact that pairs of young people are drilling each other on those same Greek word roots. Ever since Hippocrates, and certainly before that, given that ancient Greece is the birthplace of science, philosophy, and the language in which those disciplines are expressed, the language of medicine has been Greek.

So for those of you pursuing careers in health care or the allied professions, here is a list of Greek word roots that form the basis of many words you will use in your professional lives. I hope you find it useful.

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: Fascism

If WordPress’s statistics can be trusted, there has been a lot of traffic on Mark’s Text Terminal for a reading and comprehension sheet I posted a couple of months ago. To complement those documents, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on fascism.

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 Short Exercise on the Greek Word Roots Esthes, Aesthes, Esthet and Aesthet

Here, for a Monday morning, is a short exercise on the Greek word roots esthes, aesthes, esthet, and aesthet. They mean feeling and sensation. This root is at the base of quite a few words used in discussion and inquiry in the humanities, particular art, literature, and religion.

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.