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.

A Lesson Plan on the Tasting Areas of the Tongue from The Order of Things

Posted on August 24, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a short lesson on the tasting areas of the tongue, yet another derived from the pages of Barbara Ann Kipfer’s excellent reference book The Order of Things. To work students through this lesson, you’ll need this list as reading and comprehension questions.

Is this knowledge students need to possess? Probably not. These lessons are meant as confidence-building exercises for struggling learners. They deal with knowledge a little off the beaten track–often delivered in more than one symbolic systems, e.g. numbers and words–and give students experience dealing with new materials and ideas in short exercises.

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, August 21, 2020: A Lesson Plan on the Latin Word Roots Man, Mani, and Manu

Posted on August 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Latin word roots man, mani and manu, all three of which mean hand. Even a cursory glance at these three words divulge their productivity in the English language: manicure, manufacture, and manual all come immediately to mind.

I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun digit in its meaning as “any of the divisions in which the limbs of most vertebrates terminate, which are typically five in number but may be reduced (as in the horse), and which typically have a series of phalanges bearing a nail, claw, or hoof at the tip — compare FINGER 1, TOE.” I wanted this do-now exercise to hint for students what the word roots in this lesson might mean.

And, at last, here is the worksheet that is the primary work 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.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Buried Gold”

Posted on August 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

It was 52 degrees at 5:00 this morning here in southwestern Vermont, which sure felt like an harbinger of fall. It’s warming up slowly. I feel like, as I did in my late teens and early twenties, that I should be preparing to begin a six-week apple harvest. I can’t imagine, at my age, what picking 120 bushels of apples a day would do to my body and mind.

Ok, that said, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Buried Gold.” I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the proverb “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” This is often attributed to Shakespeare; in fact, it comes from the pen of the Restoration dramatist William Congreve from his play The Mourning Bride. I actually posted this short exercise with a parts of speech lesson elsewhere on this blog, so be on the lookout.

Here is the scan with the illustration, reading, and questions that you’ll need to conduct your investigation and therefore teach this lesson. And here, at last, is the typescript of the answer key so you can solve your case and bring the offender to the bar of justice–so to speak.

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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A Lesson Plan on Human Bodily Systems from The Order of Things

Posted on August 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

Moving right along, after a very unpleasant phone conversation with a charter school recruiter, here is a lesson plan on human bodily systems, another informed from text culled from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s fascinating book The Order of Things.

Here’s the list as a reading and comprehension questions that are the work 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.

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A Documents-Based Questioning (DBQ) Lesson on The Popol Vuh

Posted on August 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, we made it! This lesson plan on The Popol Vuh, the creation myth of the Quiche Maya, which brings us back to the first lesson in this unit on the Rig Veda, below. This is, then, the tenth of ten lessons (and the tenth of ten posts, therefore) in a global studies document-based questioning unit on reading, analyzing, and interpreting primary historical documents.

The short do-now exercises that I have for this lesson are arguable only tangentially related, but are useful parts of a general inventory of global studies work. These are two Cultural Literacy worksheets: the first is this half-page reading and writing exercise on colonialism and the second is this full-page worksheet on Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary general.

And, lastly, here is the reading on The Popol Vuh with its accompanying comprehension questions to take teacher and students through the 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.

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A Document-Based Questioning (DBQ) Lesson on the Magna Carta

Posted on August 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

As above and below, this DBQ lesson on the Magna Carta is the ninth of a ten-lesson global studies on reading, analyzing, and interpreting primary historical documents.

In my taxonomic system, I tagged this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concepts of checks and balances in government, but as a short document to get students settled at the beginning of the class period, this isn’t appropriate. It’s a full-page document that might be better used as independent practice (i.e. homework) as it solidly complements the reading from the Magna Carta.

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on the divine right of kings is a half-page exercise and a better fit to begin a class period. It also dovetails conceptually with the content of the Magna Carta.

And, of course, you and your students will need the reading from the Magna Carta with comprehension questions to teach and learn the lesson about political power from the Magna Carta.

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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A Document-Based Questioning (DBQ) Lesson on The Pillow Book

Posted on August 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a DBQ lesson on The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, a text whose fame has endured the centuries. This is the eighth lesson on a ten-lesson global studies unit on reading and interpreting primary historical documents.

Because the word appears in the text, I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun self-satisfaction, a fairly strong compound. If you move into a second day with this lesson–given the historical importance of the text, as well as the numerous concepts it contains, it might be appropriate–then here is another context clues worksheet on the adjective hateful, which also appears in the text.

And of course you’ll need the worksheet with the reading passage and comprehension questions to conduct 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.

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A Document-Based Questioning (DBQ) Lesson on the Qur’an

Posted on August 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

As above and below, this DBQ lesson plan on the Qur’an which is number seven of ten in global studies unit on document-based questioning.

This lesson opens, especially if you need to get students settled after a class change, with this context clues worksheet on the noun compassion. If you take the lesson into a second day, or have a use for it in general, her is another context clues worksheet on the related noun mercy.

And here, at last, is the worksheet with reading and comprehension questions on a passage from the holy book of Islam, The Qur’an.

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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A Document-Based Questioning (DBQ) Lesson on the Fire in Rome, AD 64 from The Annals of Tacitus

Posted on August 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, last but not least on this essentially perfect summer afternoon in southwestern Vermont,, here is a DBQ lesson on Tacitus’s account of the deadly fire that swept through Rome in 1864. Nero was emperor, and it is from this event that the expression “fiddling while Rome burns” originates. Nero was believed to have sung (“of the destruction of Troy”), not fiddled, as the city burned down around him.

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on the ancient Roman metaphor for decadence, “Bread and Circuses,” opens this lesson. For some reason, I included in this lesson’s folder this second Cultural Literacy worksheet, this one on the concept of a capital offense.

And here is the worksheet with the reading and comprehension questions that is the primary work 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.

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A Document-Based Questioning (DBQ) Lesson on the Apology of Socrates

Posted on August 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

As above and below, this DBQ lesson on Apology of Socrates is the fifth of a ten-lesson global studies unit on document-based questions.

This lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on allusion, and here is a second one on status quo in the event the lesson goes into a second day–or you just want the worksheet around to elucidate this Latinism so common in the English language.

You’ll need this reading and comprehension questions on Socrates’ Apology to conduct the essential work 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.

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