Category Archives: The Weekly Text

The Weekly Text is a primary feature at Mark’s Text Terminal. This category will include a variety of classroom materials in English Language Arts and social studies, most often in the form of complete lesson plans (see above) in those domains. The Weekly Text is posted on Fridays.

The Weekly Text, 20 February 2026, Black History Month Week III: A Reading on Arturo Schomburg

Posted on February 13, 2026 | Leave a comment

Sometime not long after I returned to New York in 2021, I attended a lecture a the New York Public Library (the main on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, with the lions Patience and Fortitude at the front) on Arturo Schomburg. When I lived in Harlem, I walked by his namesake, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, every morning on my way to work. I also regularly stopped in to view exhibits there as well.

Therefore, Arturo Schomburg has been something of a presence in my intellectual life since 2004.

There are two biographies of Arturo Schomburg: Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Schomburg,  by Vanessa Valdes or Arturo Schomburg: Black Bibliophile and Collector by Elinor Des Verney Sinette. I read the latter

One thing that I did pick up on at the lecture and in Ms Sinette’s book, however, was the existence of this article from the man himself. This is a PDF of an article “Arthur” (one thing I learned about Schomburg is that very little is known about him, including which given version of his given name he was using at any time) Schomburg wrote on Black History, “The Negro Digs Up His History.” Nota bene, please, that I have only posted the reading; next year at this time (I already have the basic structure assembled) you’ll find a fully realized lesson plan to accompany this article.

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, 13 February 2026, Black History Month Week II: A Lesson Plan on Richard Wright’s Poem “Between the World and Me”

Posted on February 13, 2026 | Leave a comment

One of the better (by which I mean most interesting) things I worked on and finally finished last year is this lesson plan on Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me.” As you may know, Ta-Nehisi Coates, in an obvious homage, took this title for his exceptional and necessary book of the same name.

A few years back, a colleague of mine taught it to a class in which I was the co-teacher. This was during the 2021-2022 school year: we were back after the pandemic, still wearing masks, and I had just moved back to New York City after three years away. In other words, I filed away the poem for days when I had a clearer head.

Three years later, and after a second case of covid which left me cognitively bereft for about 18 months, I was able to recover my senses and develop this lesson. Without further ado, then, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Richard Wright (two-sentence reading, three comprehension questions–very simple), which serves as the do-now exercise for this lesson. Here is the the text of the poem itself; and here is the comprehension and analysis worksheet that is the principal 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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The Weekly Text, 6 February 2026, Black History Month Week I: 27 Pages of Annotations (Covering All 17 Chapters) on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Novel “Purple Hibiscus”

Posted on February 6, 2026 | Leave a comment

OK–Black History Month 2026 has arrived. As I say every year, at Mark’s Text Terminal every month is Black History Month because Black History is American History. At the same time, far be it from me to second guess a person of Carter G. Woodson’s stature; Black History Month is his brainchild. This month I have a couple of new things to roll out, developed in the year since the last time the calendar spun around to February.

So let’s start out with these 27 pages of annotations I prepared to accompany all 17 chapters of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel Purple Hibiscus. As you may know, Ms. Adichie is a member of a group of writers known as the “Children of Achebe” (about which I heard a great deal on a public radio program several years ago, and can now find no credible source for citation on the Internet). Artificial Intelligence (which I think dubious at best) yields a list of names that include Ms. Adichie, as well as Helon Habila, Chigozie Obioma, and Sefi Atta.

Achebe, of course, refers the the late, great, Chinua Achebe, whose novel Things Fall Apart is universally regarded as a masterpiece of post-colonial literature. Purple Hibiscus is also an exemplary post-colonial novel. And it’s difficult to get past the first sentence of this fine book without noticing Ms. Adichie’s homage to Chinua Achebe: “Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines on the etagere.”

Finally, in preparing this post, I intended to refer to material I’d prepared and published for Ms. Adichie’s short book (pamphlet, really, and literally the transcript of a TED talk), We Should All Be Feminists. To my surprise, I somehow never staged this material for inclusion in this blog. I have two versions of the unit, one complete and one incomplete. The complete unit was prepared for a small class of emergent readers and writers, so there is a lot of material. Needless to say, now that I have uncovered this lapse, I have this material in the warehouse and ready for publication.

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, 30 January 2026: The Writing Revolution Learning Supports II; Abbreviations and Symbols

Posted on January 30, 2026 | Leave a comment

As we approach Black History Month 2026, this will be the last–for the moment–of the Writing Revolution Learning Supports I will publish. I have a few documents remaining that I’ll distribute over three Weekly Texts in April. For the next two months, you’ll find materials related to Black History Month (February) and Women’s History Month (March).

For today, however, here is the table of contents–not that you’ll need it as there are only two documents. However, depending on how you organize your own files, you might want this document to copy and paste from if you decide to assemble your own table of contents for all this material.

And here, of course, are the documents:

II-A*Abbreviations and Symbols Learning Support 1

II-B*II-A*Abbreviations and Symbols Learning Support 2

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, 23 January 2026: The Writing Revolution Learning Supports I; Conjunctions

Posted on January 23, 2026 | Leave a comment

OK, now that all the templates I developed for The Writing Revolution curricula are up, let’s get started with the learning supports. These will roll out in five different posts in order to keep the categories straight. This first post is the big one, on conjunctions. Here is the table of contents I, on conjunctions, for this tranche of documents.

And here are the documents:

I-A*Learning Support Template with Citation

I-B*Conjunctions Explanation Support

I-C*Because, But, So Learning Support

I-D*Because, But, So Learning Support Annotated

I-E*Learning Support for Subordinating Conjunctions Before, After, If

I-F*Learning Support for Subordinating Conjunctions When, Although, and Even Though

I-G*Learning Support for Subordinating Conjunctions Since, While, Unless, and Whenever

I-H*Learning Support for Subordinating Conjunctions Before, After, If, Adapted for Basic Definitions

I-I*Learning Support for Subordinating Conjunctions When, Although, and Even Though Adapted for Basic Definitions

I-J*Learning Support for Subordinating Conjunctions Since, While, Unless, and Whenever Adapted for Basic Definitions

I-K*Using Conjunctions Learning Supports 1 and 2 (Two Pages in One Document)

I-L*Subordinating Conjunctions Learning Support

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, 9 January 2025: The Writing Revolution Templates III; Outlining Forms

Posted on January 9, 2026 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is the third array of templates–these for outlining–derived from the framework of Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler’s The Writing Revolution (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017). Here is the table of contents for the outlining templates in this tranche of documents. Please forgive the long file name(s). I am publishing a large number of things right now, and I’d like users to be able to keep track of them with ease. In any event, you can rename these–or even rewrite them–as they are all formatted in Microsoft Word for ease of revision, reformatting, and general manipulation.

III-A*Single-Paragraph Outline

III-B*Combined Outline

III-C* Transition Outline (Two Paragraphs)

III-D*Transtion Outline (Three Paragraphs)

III-E*Single Paragraph Outine (Book Report)

III-F*Multiple-Paragraph Outline (Three Paragraphs)

III-G*Multiple-Paragraph Outline (Four Paragraphs)

III-H*Multiple Paragraph Outline (Five Paragraphs)

III-I.Multiple-Paragraph Outline (Book Report)

III-J*The Match Game–Which Details Go with Which Topic Sentence?

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, 19 December 2025: The Writing Revolution Templates II; Worksheets

Posted on December 15, 2025 | Leave a comment

As we slide into the holidays (there will be no Weekly Texts for the next two Fridays), this week’s Text is a list of worksheet templates developed from Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler’s excellent framework for writing instuction, The Writing Revolution (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017). First of all, here is the worksheets templates table of contents. And here are the worksheet templates themselves:

II-A*What Makes a Sentence a Sentence; Fragments, Scrambled Sentences, and Run-Ons

II-B*Piece It Together; Unscrambling Scrambled Sentences

II-C*Put the Brakes On; Correcting Run-On Sentences

II-D*Four Types of Sentence Writing, Declarative, Imperative, Interrogative and Exclamatory (Four Templates in One Document)

II-E*What Do You Know? Developing Questions

II-F*Let’s Play Jeopardy; Giving Students the Answers and Asking for Questions

II-G*The Power of Basic Conjunctions Because, But, So

II-H*How to Say It in Writing–Ten Subordinating Conjunctions Distributed Over Three Worksheet Templates

II-I*Another Name for a Noun; Appositive and Matching Appositives (Two Templates in One Document)

II-J*Put Them Together; Sentence Combining

II-K* Sentence Expansion; Bigger and Better–Expanding Sentences to Expand Students’ Knowledge and Responses and What Do You See? Using Sentence Expansion to Write Captions for Pictures (Two Templates in One Document)

II-L*The Power of Note-Taking–To Note-Taking Formats Distributed Over Two Worksheet Templates

II-M*Sentence with a Semicolon Stop

II-N*Sentence with a Colon Stop

II-O*Sentence Stem with a Coordinating Conjunction

II-P*Sentence Stem with an Elision for Parentheses

II-Q*Sentence Stem with Like or As to Produce an Analogy or a Simile

II-R*Partial Sentence with the Conjunctions Except, But, and Although to Join Contrary or Contradictory Pieces of Information

II-S*Which One Doesn’t Belong? Eliminating the Lease Relevant Sentence

II-T*Summary Sentence Worksheet

II-U*Select Appropriate Details from the List to Support Each Topic Sentence

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 December 2025: The Writing Revolution Templates I; Lesson Plans

Posted on December 12, 2025 | Leave a comment

OK, I don’t know if I suggested comprehensiveness in these materials, but I think I may have achieved it (or else divulged to the world the degree of my obsessiveness) with them. What you have here, listed in this table of contents, are 18 lesson plan templates that follow the framework of Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler’s The Writing Revolution (San Francisco: Jossey Bass: 2017).

Without further ado, here are the templates, which are numbered as they are in the table of contents, with the Roman numeral one and the Roman alphabet letter following.

I-A*What Makes a Sentence a Sentence; Fragments, Scrambled Sentences, and Run-Ons

I-B*Piece it together; Unscrambling Scrambled Sentences

I-C*Put the Brakes On; Correcting Run-On Sentences

I-D*Four Types of Sentence Writing, Declarative, Imperative, Interrogative and Imperative (Four Templates in One Document)

I-E*What Do You Know? Developing Questions

I-F*Let’s Play Jeopardy; Giving Students the Answers and Asking for Questions

I-G*The Power of Basic Conjunctions, Because, But, and So

I-H*How to Say It in Writing; Subordinating Conjunctions

I-I*Another Name for a Noun, Appositives and Matching Appositives (Two Templates in One Document)

I-J*Put Them Together; Sentence Combining

I-K*Sentence Expansion–Bigger and Better, Expanding Sentences to Expand Students’ Knowledge and Responses and What Do You See? Using Sentence Expansion to Write Captions for Pictures (Two Templates in One Document)

I-L*The Power of Note-Taking; Key Words and Phrases, Abbreviations, and Symbols

I-M*Sentence with a Semicolon Stop

I-N*Sentence with a Colon Stop

I-O*Sentence Stem with a Coordinating Conjunction

I-P*Sentence Stem with and Elision for Parentheses

I-Q*Sentence Stem with Like or As to Produce and Analogy or a Simile

I-R*Partial Sentence with the Conjunctions Except, But, and Although to Join Contrary or Contradictory Pieces of Information

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 December 2025: Three Planning Templates for The Writing Revolution

Posted on December 5, 2025 | Leave a comment

If you are a relatively regular reader of this blog, then you know that I’ve been talking about developing materials to use with Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler’s framework for writing instruction, The Writing Revolution (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2017). Last summer (2024) and into this fall (2025), I finally finished developing the templates and other planning documents for units and lesson using The Writing Revolution as their basis.

As I hope this blog shows, I not only spend a lot of time thinking about good writing and how to teach it, but also, I hope, producing some middling quality prose to drive this blog. I have also, over the years (35 of them as a teacher in various capacities) read a plethora of grammar and style manuals for my own edification, but also to help me plan writing instruction.

As far as scripted curricula go, I expect this blog demonstrates abundantly my skepticism towards them and their authors. The Writing Revolution is different for a couple of reasons: it actually calls upon students to understand certain concepts (i.e. subordinating conjunctions to form complex sentences, etc.) in grammar while applying those concepts in the service of composing good prose.

The Writing Revolution also calls upon students to practice, practice, practice writing. Its scope and sequence contains a fair amount of repetition. I know it’s fashionable to call such work “drill and kill,” but it’s also facile and, I would argue, ignorant. There are certain things in this world–say breathing and masturbation–that one need not practice at. But writing? Writers write. And writing well, like playing a musical instrument or perfecting a curve ball, takes practice. Hence my enthusiasm for The Writing Revolution.

For the next five weeks (actually seven, as there will be no Weekly Texts on December 19 or 26th in observance of the holidays), I’ll post all the templates I created based on the framework of The Writing Revolution. 

Let’s begin with three of my own creation, to with, this unit plan template, this lesson plan template, and this worksheet template.

And that is it for this week. Stay tuned, as there is plenty more to come.

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, 28 November 2025, National Native American Heritage Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on British Settlement in North America

Posted on November 20, 2025 | Leave a comment

For the final Text of National Native American Heritage Month 2025, here is a reading on British settlement in North America with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. While this text never explicitly mentions the indigenous peoples of North America or the devastation brought upon them by British colonists and their successors, I think that might be a useful point of entry for students.

One simple question: Who is missing here? Or, if you prefer, was anyone displaced or marginalized by the arrival in North American of European colonists? Or, you might follow this up with material on the Pequot War, which answers the two previous questions. Or, consistent with the current administration’s view of historical inquiry, you could say that the British arrived to a mostly empty continent (which, of course, is nonsense), and what few indigenous peoples inhabited this land were quick to abandon their complex and ancient culture to start driving Buicks.

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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