Category Archives: Independent Practice

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

Four Sets of Questions to Support Students in Preparing Research Papers

Last, but possibly not least (I hope), from the past couple of years as a co-teacher in Jason Zanitsch’s senior English Language Arts class, here are four documents to support Jason’s Multi-Genre Research Project Unit. In this series of lessons, students are called upon to choose a topic to research–they are provided a list of potential topics, but strongly encouraged to pursue something they prefer–and present it to the class in a genre they choose: a video, a paper, a skit, a panel discussion, and so forth.

Along the way in this course, I’ve developed supports to assist students in this assignment–the post on solipsism, a dozen or so posts below this one is something I developed for this work. For today’s post, here are lists of questions to arouse students’ thinking on Assata Shakur, the Scottsboro Boys Case, the West Memphis Three Case, and the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

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 Learning Support to Aid Writing on Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

Are you familiar with Lawrence Kohlberg’s  Theory of the Stages of Moral Development? My excellent co-teacher in the years I worked in his senior English Language Arts class, Jason Zanitsch, developed a clever unit in which students apply their understanding of Kohlberg’s framework to assess a character from the fiction and dramatic texts–the characters in August Wilson’s magisterial play Fences were favorites for this work–that we had dealt with in this class.

I developed this learning support for a mid-term examination, which was the composition of an essay on the above, for students to use. I don’t know how useful it would be for you. But if you’re dealing with Kohlberg in any way, this document is in Microsoft Word (like practically everything else on this blog) and can be easily manipulated for your classroom needs.

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 Agincourt

“Battle of Agincourt: (1415) A battle in northern France. The English army defeated the more numerous, better armed French. It is the setting for Shakespeare’s Henry V and Michael Drayton’sThe Battle of Agincourt‘ (c1605).”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

A Learning Support to Accompany Stephanie Ericsson’s Essay “The Ways We Lie”

One of the most consistently downloaded items since I published it in 2021 is this set of documents on Stephanie Ericsson’s essay “The Way We Lie.” Last year, I developed this learning support to abet deeper thinking (I hope) and further written work on this essay.

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 Learning Support for Thinking and Writing About the Human Process of Socialization

Once again, from the annals of Jason Zanitsch’s senior English Language Arts class, which afforded me the professional pleasure of co-teaching with Jason for several years, here is a a learning support in the form of a series questions to drive thinking and writing about human socialization processes.

I don’t know how useful this will be to users of this blog, but this again was Jason’s successful attempt to elicit deep thinking and cogent writing from our students. Rather than toss this, I post it here to add to what still seems like an amount of data storage I will never use.

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 Lexicon of Igbo Words to Accompany a Reading of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Novel Purple Hibiscus

I don’t know why, but for some reason, when I published this blog post several years ago, with a trove of materials I developed to accompany a reading of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Purple Hibiscus, I didn’t include this lexicon of Igbo words, names, and phrases. So here it is now.

This is where I usually ask for feedback on a document, especially for alerts on typos. But since I know nothing of Igbo orthography, I must ask you to trust, as I do, the unnamed author or authors of this document.

Three Documents to Support Written Analyses of Like Water for Chocolate

Continuing with a mishmash of documents I developed to support students, here are, again from the senior English Language Arts class I co-taught with Jason Zanitsch, some documents to support student work for a reading of Laura Esquivel’s novel Like Water for Chocolate. Jason’s goals for this unit were twofold and well focused: to introduce students to the genre of magical realism, and to use the story to induce students to write in a lively way about food–with a goal, of course, to arouse their thinking about lively descriptive writing in general. Over the years, I enjoyed watching Jason elicit some excellent prose from students using this unit.

So, here is a graphic organizer to track chapters, a brainstorming worksheet (consisting of ten modified cloze exercises) for using lively words to describe food with a lexicon of food-related words attached. Finally, here is the lexicon of lively words to describe food as a freestanding document.

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.

Bay Psalm Book

“Bay Psalm Book: (1640) A metrical translation of the Biblical psalms by Richard Mather, Thomas Welde, John Eliot, and twenty-seven other ministers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The book—the first bound book printed in the English colonies—was published by Stephen Day in Cambridge in and edition of seventeen hundred copies. Its full title is The Whole Booke of Psalms Faithfully Translated into English Metre.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Cultural Literacy: Dog Eat Dog

Moving on through my differentiated and supported materials folder, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom dog eat dog. I suspect you can find this document, in a simpler version, elsewhere on this blog. I developed this version of this worksheet to accompany a reading of the Langston Hughes poem “Let America Be America Again” which puts this idiom to work.

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 Learning Support on the Concept of Solipsism

Here is a learning support on the concept of solipsism that I worked up for a student in the excellent Senior English Language Arts class I’ve co-taught with Jason Zanitsch during these final years of my teaching career. There are more differentiated materials and learning supports from this course forthcoming.

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.