Category Archives: Lesson Plans

This category identifies a post with several documents, which will include a lesson plan, and may include a short exercise to being the class (known in the New York City Department of Education as a “do-now”) a worksheet, often scaffolded, a teacher’s copy of the worksheet, and a learning support of some kind.

The Weekly Text, 2 December 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Westward Ho-Hum!”

Posted on December 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the the Crime and Puzzlement case “Westward Ho-Hum!” I open this lesson with this half-page Cultural Literacy worksheet (with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions) on the Gallicism esprit de corps. To fortify this document with a bit of context, Merriam-Webster defines this noun as denoting “the common spirit existing in the members of a group and inspiring enthusiasm, devotion, and strong regard for the honor of the group.”

To investigate this case, your students will need this PDF of the illustration and questions that serve as both evidence and procedure of inquiry into this heinous crime. Finally, to solve your case and apprehend a suspect, here is the typescript of the answer key.

And that’s it for this week. I hope you and yours enjoyed a relaxed and (if this is your bent), suitably gluttonous Thanksgiving.

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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The Weekly Text, 12 November 2021: A Review Lesson on the Use of Pronouns in Declarative Sentences

Posted on November 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is the penultimate lesson in the 13-lesson unit on pronouns I engineered several years ago, and have been working on ever since. It is basically a pre-assessment review lesson to prepare student for the final lesson, a guided mastery exercise in which they review and recapitulate all the foregoing lessons.

I open this lesson with this Everyday Edit worksheet on “Women Get the Vote.” If the lesson enters a second day for whatever reason, here is another Everyday Edit, this one on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Here is the scaffolded worksheet for this lesson that is its primary work. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of same. I’ll put up the final lesson soon, and then there will be a 13-lesson unit on pronouns available in its entirety on Mark’s Text Terminal.

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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The Weekly Text, 5 November 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “False Alarm”

Posted on November 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “False Alarm.” I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Gallicism enfant terrible.

To conduct your investigation of this misdemeanor, you’ll need this PDF of the illustration and questions that serve as evidence and interrogative in the case. And here is the typescript of the answer key. And that’s it for another week.

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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The Weekly Text, 29 October 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Basic Rights of All Children

Posted on October 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is another lesson plan drawn from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s indispensable reference book The Order of Things, this one on the basic rights of children. This is a basic lesson for emergent and struggling readers, as you’ll see from its list as reading and comprehension questions: the reading is a list of ten basic rights, and I’ve prepared five basic comprehension questions.

You, however, may do with this as you like. Because both lesson plan and worksheet are formatted in Microsoft Word (as are most of the documents you will find on this website–and if you’re a regular user of this site, I’ll bet you are tired of hearing me say that), these are what I believe are called, using the term loosely, “open source” documents. Whatever the nomenclature, these materials can be exported and manipulated freely.

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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The Weekly Text, 22 October 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Water Bed”

Posted on October 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Water Bed.” I begin this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Latinism caveat emptor. As you probably know, this locution means “let the buyer beware.” However, in everyday discourse one will often hear someone say “there is a caveat” or “there are several caveats” in any given situation. Caveat by itself means (by  Merriam-Webster’s reckoning) “a warning enjoining one from certain acts or practices.” All of this is a roundabout way of saying that caveat emptor in particular, and caveat in general, are arguable words high school students should know by their graduation.

Anyway, you’ll need this PDF scan of the illustration and questions related to the evidence in this case to investigate it. And here is the answer key to solve the case and bring your culprit to the bar of justice.

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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The Weekly Text, 10 September 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Number of Characters Used in Writing Systems from The Order of Things

Posted on September 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the number of characters used in writing systems. Like all of the lessons and other materials under the heading of The Order of Things, this lesson and its list as reading and comprehension questions are adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s magisterial reference book of the same name.

Nota bene, please, that I adapted these materials to assist students who struggle to work with two symbolic systems–i.e., in this case, numbers and letters–at the same time. Needless to say, these documents can be adapted for your use; they are, like almost everything else here, in Microsoft Word. In other words, they are open source.

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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The Weekly Text, 3 September 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Cookie Jar”

Posted on September 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Cookie Jar.” I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the French noun phrase coup de grace. This is a half-page worksheet with a three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. Let me caution you that its not the cheeriest of material: remember that the original meaning of coup de grace is “a death blow or death shot administered to end the suffering of one mortally wounded.” If you want a better do-now for this lesson, there are thousands of them on this blog–just go to the word cloud on the home page and click on “context clues” or “cultural literacy.”

To conduct your investigation into the heinous crime committed in this lesson, you’ll need this PDF scan of the illustration and questions that serve, respectively, and the evidence and investigative points for solving the case. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key to help you bring the offender to justice.

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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Write It Right: Clever for Obliging

Posted on August 31, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Clever for Obliging. In this sense the word was once in general use in the United States, but is now seldom heard and life here is less insupportable.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

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The Weekly Text, 27 August 2021: A Lesson Plan on Using the Reciprocal Pronouns

Posted on August 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on using the reciprocal pronoun. In addition to the broad use of language the lesson aims to help students develop, the narrow objective of this lesson is to help students understand usage, in this case that the two reciprocal pronouns are, each other, which refers to two people, and one another, which refers to more than two people. 

I generally open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Latinism mea culpa (i.e. “my fault” or “I’m to blame,” or, as I’ve heard some students say, “my bad”; you can probably see the root of culpability in this phrase). This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. If the lesson goes into a second day, or if you simply prefer it, here is a homophones worksheet on you’re and your. This is also a half-page worksheet, with six modified cloze exercises.

This scaffolded worksheet is the principal work of this lesson. It starts with a series of modified cloze exercises, then calls upon students, to practice independently (i.e. homework) by writing sentences demonstrating they can align the proper number of subject with its proper reciprocal pronoun. To make teaching this a little easier, here is 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.

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The Weekly Text, 20 August 2021: A Lesson Plan on Nations with the Shortest Coastlines from The Order of Things

Posted on August 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on nations with the shortest coastlines. Here is the list as reading with comprehension questions. As the title of this post indicates, this is another lesson adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s magisterial (I really want her job) reference book The Order of Things (New York: Random House, 1997).

Nota bene, please, that I wrote these materials (there are quite a few of them on this blog now, with more to come) with the needs of students who struggle with reading in mind, especially when two symbolic systems (letters and numbers) are at work in the same lesson. If you find this lesson useful in your classroom, you might find its companion, a lesson on nations with the longest coastlines, which I published last month, a complement to the documents in this post.

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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