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, 11 November 2022, National Native American Heritage Month Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Homestead Act

Posted on November 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text, in this blog’s ongoing observance of National Native American Heritage Month 2022, is a reading on the Homestead Act in the United States along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The effect of opening the western frontier to settlement on First Nations requires, I must assume, no explanation.

Have you by any chance seen Reservation Dogs? This superb and highly praised show needs no endorsement from this blog–so you should just go watch it. I’m just saying. If you don’t believe me (as Fred Holbrook used to say to me–and of me, alas–“Get it from the horse’s mouth rather than the other end”), listen to Patrick, of Patrick Is a Navajo, and his friends pay affectionate tribute to the program. Again, I’m just saying.

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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Cultural Literacy: Dawes Act of 1887

Posted on November 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Dawes Act of 1887, a piece of well-intentioned–at least from some points of view, though not mine–legislation designed, really, to destroy once and for all the communitarian. tribal, lifestyle of indigenous peoples in the rapidly expanding (at the time of the Act’s passage) United States.

This is full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and three comprehension questions. So, it’s just the basics. But, like almost everything else on Mark’s Text Terminal, this is a Microsoft Word document you can tailor to your needs. The Dawes Act opens a lot of discursive doors into discussion rooms on imperialism, militant individualism and anti-collectivism, the theoretical and practical limitations of libertarianism, and simple–and simple-minded racism.

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.

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The Weekly Text, 4 November 2022, National Native American Heritage Month Week I: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on American Imperialism

Posted on November 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text, in observance of National Native American Heritage Month, is a reading on American imperialism with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This seems like a pretty good place to begin considering the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

This is the first year Mark’s Text Terminal has observed, with posts, National Native American Heritage Month. I can plead extenuation only through ignorance; I really hadn’t been aware that the month existed. For me, that is especially shocking, because Native American History was a surpassing interest of mine in high school. Indeed, my entire crowd took an interest in those days, the mid-to-late 1970s. We kept up with Akwesasne Notes (available in those days at numerous outlets in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin), owned copies of Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohsts Storm, and kept up with the American Indian Movement’s affairs. We cheered the Wounded Knee occupation retrospectively, since we weren’t a crowd back in those days. Similarly, we supported the Menominee Warrior Society in its seizure of the Alexian Brothers Novitiate in Gresham, Wisconsin, with attendance at their trials (I seem to remember one at held at Juneau, Wisconsin, for some reason).

Personally, I carried a Free Leonard Peltier petition around in my book bag for several months, gathering just over 3,000 signatures before sending it, to no avail, to President Jimmy Carter. I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown twice by my fifteenth birthday–which then and now exercised an enormous effect on my consciousness. So, I have no excuse neither for my ignorance of this holiday, nor the paucity of materials I currently possess related to it.

Henceforth, I seek to remedy this oversight.

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 October 2022: A Lesson Plan on Expenditures by Americans from The Order of Things

Posted on October 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text, based on material adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s endlessly fascinating reference book The Order of Things, is a lesson plan on expenditures by Americans. The only think you’ll need for this lesson as it is currently constituted is this worksheet with a list as reading and comprehension questions.

I conceived of this series of lessons (and may write more if I need them) as a way of helping students who struggle when asked to deal with two symbolic systems (language and numbers in this case) at the same time. These are simple readings and worksheets designed as much as anything to help build confidence in students in their ability to learn.

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, 21 October 2022: A Lesson Plan on the Greek Word Root Pale/o

Posted on October 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a complete lesson on the Greek word root pale/o. It means, simply, ancient. You’ll find this root at the base of paleolithic, a key word in in any global history course, but also in paleontology as well as more technical academic words like paleozoology, paleobotany, and paleography.

I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun antique, which is also plugged in as an adjective. Where the context of the sentences in this document are concerned, antique means “a relic or object of ancient times” as a noun and “being in the style or fashion of former times” as an adjective. Finally, here is the the scaffolded 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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The Weekly Text, 14 October 2022, Hispanic Heritage Month Week V: Salvador Dali

Posted on October 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

OK, for this, the final Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month 2022, here are a reading on Salvador Dali and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. What has Salvador Dali to do with Hispanic history? I can’t answer that question in the affirmative with any confidence, so I’ll offer up an opinion of Dali himself.

His art never appealed or spoke to me. In fact, I found it pretentious, dorm-room metaphysical crap. His glib self-promotion turned me off, and his cutesy personal politics, or his “surreal dalliance with fascism,” are simply repulsive. What this post shows, I am utterly loathe to admit, is that I am running out of documents with which to observe Hispanic Heritage Month. So, if you find these documents useful, I’m relieved.

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, 7 October 2022, Hispanic Heritage Month Week IV: Pablo Picasso

Posted on October 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

On this fourth Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month 2022, here is a reading on Pablo Picasso with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension 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, 30 September 2022, Hispanic Heritage Month Week III: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Posted on September 30, 2022 | Leave a comment

On the third Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month 2022, here is a reading on One Hundred Years of Solitude, the masterpiece of Magical Realism from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Have you read it? When I was a high school senior, my somewhat older but infinitely more sophisticated girlfriend gave me a copy. I read it, and as you can imagine, understood none of it. I keep meaning to get back to it.

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 September 2022, Hispanic Heritage Month Week II: Fidel Castro

Posted on September 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

For the second Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month 2022, here are a reading on Fidel Castro along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. And yes, I do understand that Fidel Castro is a controversial figure. Controversy is the food of inquiry, and in any case, Castro is an integral part of modern Latin American history.

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, 16 September 2022, Hispanic Heritage Month Week I: Francisco Goya

Posted on September 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

Yesterday began Hispanic Heritage Month 2022, which occurs every year between September 15 and October 15. This year’s month contains five Fridays, so there will be five Weekly Texts such as today’s–i.e. readings and comprehension worksheets. Unfortunately, and to my chagrin, this will exhaust my supply of materials for this month where Weekly Texts are concerned. I have developed a number of shorter exercises to post while I figure something out for Fridays–i.e. Weekly Text day.

For now, here is a reading on Francisco Goya along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension 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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