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 Crime and Puzzlement Case “Incident at the Ferry”

Posted on March 31, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Incident at the Ferry.”

I use this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the American idiom “Every dog has his day” to open this lesson. You’ll need this PDF of the illustration and questions surrounding the case so that your students may conduct their investigation. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key to solve this heinous crime.

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 Admission of States to the Union from The Order of Things

Posted on March 30, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, before I return to a really trashy thriller I have the bad judgement to read, here is a lesson plan on the admission on the admission–or readmission after the Civil War–of states to the United States. Here also is the worksheet at the center of this lesson.

The material I have adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s The World of Order and Organization; How Things Are Arranged into Hierarchies, Structures, and Pecking Orders (New York: Random House, 1997)–the original copy I possessed of the book not long after it was published was called simply The Order of Things, hence the title of the unit–and written into lessons and worksheets is something brand new at Mark’s Text Terminal. I used only a few of them in the classroom. Since it is unlikely that I will teach at the secondary level in public schools again, these are untested. I’ll post them anyway; a rationale, and my thinking toward that rationale, for their use can be found on the “About Posts & Texts” page, linked to just above the banner photograph but below the banner itself.

Please allow me to dilate on the statement below: like just about everything on Mark’s Text Terminal, these are Microsoft Word documents. That means you can alter and adapt them to your needs. If you use these materials and find them effective, I would be much obliged for your comments. And please keep in mind that if these are useful educational instruments, I will be much more likely to produce more of them–and post them here.

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 Using the Predicate Adjective

Posted on March 30, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a lesson plan on using the predicate adjective in short, declarative sentences. The syntax of these kinds of short sentences, which is subject-linking verb-adjective, is one of the most common constructions in English speech and prose. For that reason, I have included a lesson on the predicate adjective on each of the first three units on parts of speech, to wit nouns, verbs, and adjectives, that I wrote about ten years ago and have revised ever since.

That’s a long way around explaining that you will see lessons on using the predicate adjective in grammatically complete declarative sentences at least a couple of more times.

In any case, I open this lesson with this worksheet on the homophones compliment and complement. Because the noun complement is often used as a synonym for predicate in grammar manuals, and I think it’s important that students know how to use grammar manuals, I want them to know this word. This scaffolded worksheet is the mainstay of this lesson; here is the teachers’ copy of it. Finally, here is an adjectives word bank. Please notice  that this document has four copies of the same word list–it’s meant to be cut in four pieces in a paper-saving measure.

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 the Latin Word Root Circum-

Posted on March 29, 2020 | Leave a comment

Alright, moving right along, here is a lesson plan on the Latin word root circum; it means around. It is, as this worksheet that is the mainstay of the lesson fairly quickly exposes, a very productive root in English. Moreover, these are words that are in very heavy use in educated discourse in this country, which is why your student or child should know them as well as the root at the base of them.

I open this lesson with the context clues on the adverb and adjective abroad. It is a conceptual antonym to words formed from circum-, and to the extent possible, the worksheet itself aims to hint at these words and their meanings–as well as the idea of an antonym.

That’s it for today. I hope you are at home and safe, and all young minds are engaged, wherever you are.

Godspeed.

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 the Admission of the First 13 of the United States from The Order of Things

Posted on March 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is something new at Mark’s Text Terminal: a reading and analysis lesson plan derived from the text of Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book The Order of Things. I’ll be writing up a summary of this work and its purpose on the “About Posts & Texts” page, which you can click through to just above the banner photograph. I am still thinking through how to describe the object of these lessons (I have 30 of them outlined at this point), but I can say this much: these worksheets are an attempt to provide students practice, as a road to developing their own understanding of what former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich called the work of “symbolic analysts.”

This first lesson plan is on the admission of the first 13 of the United States. The worksheet for this lesson calls upon students to read and analyze both language and numbers (two sets of symbols, in other words) in order to answer a series of relatively simple comprehension questions. There is a lot of room to alter this material to you and your students’ needs; as always, these documents are in Microsoft Word, so they are easily manipulable.

More of these are forthcoming, as is a more extensive explanation of them and rationale for their use, as above, on the “About Posts & Texts” page.

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 the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Buck Shot”

Posted on March 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

As I’ve previously mentioned, the Crime and Puzzlement material I post on this site quickly became, and remains, among the most popular and therefore heavily downloaded items here. So, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Buck Shot.”

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining” opens the lesson as a do-now exercise to get students settled, engaged, and thinking after a class change. You’ll need the PDF of the illustration and questions in order to conduct the investigation; to solve it, here is the typescript of the answer key.

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 Watson, Crick, and DNA

Posted on March 25, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, folks, here is the last post for today, a lesson plan on Watson, Crick, and DNA. The work of this lesson is simply this short reading and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I wrote this lesson last fall for the Personal Development class the school in which I served required its students to take. I wanted the material, and its presentation, to arouse the big essential question, “Is biology destiny?”

However, if you’re more interested in teaching this material as a science lesson, here is a slightly longer version of the reading and worksheet. If you want to amplify this lesson, especially for girls interested in science, the reading does mention Rosalind Franklin, whose story is a cautionary tale by any standard I recognize.

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 Nouns as the Indirect Objects of Verbs

Posted on March 24, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, folks, here is the big post of the day, to wit, a lesson plan on nouns as the indirect objects of verbs. I open this lesson with this worksheet on homophones worksheet on the verbs (and nouns) compliment and complement. Here is the scaffolded worksheet at the center of this lesson; here too is teacher’s copy of the worksheet.

Now a few quick words of explanation. The verb and noun complement is often used in grammar manuals to describe predicates consisting of direct and indirect objects (and by the way, I posted a lesson plan on nouns as the direct objects of verbs a few days back that works well with this lesson), so I want students to recognize that meaning of this polysemous word when they see it. As I mentioned in the post on direct objects, this point of grammar will help students when they undertake to study a foreign language. Direct and indirect objects, particularly in inflected languages, require different case endings. For example, in Russian the direct object takes the accusative case ending, but indirect objects are in the dative 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.

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A Lesson Plan on Understanding and Differentiating Historical Dates

Posted on March 23, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a lesson plan on understanding and differentiating historical dates which I have actually previously posted on Mark’s Text Terminal. While this is a social studies lesson on understanding how we use numbers to count and describe historical time, it has an ulterior literacy motive in that it seeks to help students, particularly the many English language learners I have served over the years.

We use two types of numbers when we talk about historical dates, ordinal and cardinal. Ordinal numbers are adjectives that, as their name indicates, place things in order. So, when we use terms like fourteenth century, fifteenth century, and so on, we are using ordinal numbers. Similarly, when we say, respectively, the 1300s, the 1400s, and so on, we are using cardinal numbers, which are nouns and which we use to count things. These two types of numbers are different in English just as they are different in other languages. Because I didn’t initially understand the difference between these kinds of numbers, I struggled to understand the numbering system in Russian when I studied that language.

For that reason, I wrote this context clues worksheet on the adjective ordinal and this on the noun phrase cardinal number. These worksheets aim to help students understand the difference between these two types of numbers and their use in English prose. This is knowledge that transfers across the curriculum–to foreign languages, English language arts, mathematics itself, and, yes, social studies.

Finally, here is the combined learning support and worksheet that is the gravamen 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, Essays/Readings, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, Reference, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Missy Takes a Walk”

Posted on March 23, 2020 | Leave a comment

Let’s start out today with this lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Missy Takes a Walk.”

I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of “The Ugly American” which is common enough locution in English, and worth knowing if students are planning to travel abroad. This PDF of the illustration and questions that drive this investigation. And here, finally, is the typescript of the answers to the investigative questions of 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.

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Posted in Essays/Readings, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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