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, 12 September 2025: A Lesson on the Latin Word Roots Duc and Duct

This week’s Text is a lesson on the Latin word roots duc and duct. They mean “to lead” and grow such high-frequency English words as abduct, aqueduct, induct, deduct, deduce, and seduce, all of which are included on the scaffolded worksheet, complete with Romance language cognates. I open this lesson with this context clues on the verb guide. I’d like to think that short do-now points toward the meaning of the two Latin roots under analysis in 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.

The Weekly Text, 5 September 2025: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Coeducation

The Weekly Text for 5 September 2025, for some reason, is this reading on coeducation and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I have only the faintest idea of why I developed this material; I vaguely recall a class that didn’t believe me when I told them that men and women were–and are (e.g. Smith, Mount Holyoke, both part of the Five College Consortium, which includes my alma mater, Hampshire College)–educated separately in many colleges and universities in the United States.

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.

The Weekly Text, 29 August 2025: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Charles Ponzi

This week’s Text is a reading on Charles Ponzi accompanied but its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

In the fall of 2008, when the United States economy crashed and nearly took the rest of the world down with it, I had just accepted a job at an economics-and-finance-themed high school in the Financial District in Manhattan. I rode the 2 or the 5 train from the North Bronx to the Wall Street Station. My school was on Trinity Place, right across the street from Zuccotti Park. In other words, I worked right in the middle of the Financial District while the place was–metaphorically–going up in flames. It was a weird time: the streets were weirdly quiet, and the restaurants and bars, usually full of boisterous traders, were dead.

Then came Bernie Madoff. My students couldn’t understand what he’d done, but several of them sure were interested. These documents are some of the fruits of my labor that sought to educate these kids about, well, rip-off artists.

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.

The Weekly Text, 22 August 2025: A Lesson on the Latin Word Root Pel

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Latin word root pel. It means “drive” and can be found in such high-frequency English words as compel, dispel, expel, propel, and repel, all included, of course, on this scaffolded worksheet, which includes cognates from the Romance languages.

I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the verb animateIt’s used transitively, and in this document it means “to move to action.” I hope it points the way to the meaning of pel.

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.

The Weekly Text, 15 August 2025: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Alan Turing

If memory serves, I wrote the documents in this week’s Text, to wit a reading on Alan Turing and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet early on in my career for a computer-obsessed young fellow. Alan Turing certainly remains an fascinating figure. And if the 2014 motion picture The Imitation Game indicates anything, it is that there is still popular as well as historical interest in Turing.

It’s probably worth mentioning that the T in the acronym CAPTCHA stands for “Turing.” The full name is “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”

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.

The Weekly Text, 8 August 2025: Lesson Seven of a Unit on Writing Reviews

OK–after eight weeks of drafting these posts, this week’s Text is seventh and final lesson plan of a unit on writing reviews. Since this lesson concludes the unit and turns students loose to write their reviews, I have included four Cultural Literacy worksheets as do-now exercises with the idea that students will need at least four days to write and revise their compositions. So here are those documents on hyperbole, nuance, analogy, and paraphrase. Each of these worksheet is a half-page long with short readings and three or fewer comprehension questions.

At this point in the unit, students should have their thoughts on their review outlined, and, therefore, in a final state of organization. So this short organizer is the worksheet for this lesson, and simply asks students a few final clarifying questions on their planned paper. This is for their benefit, and one final clarifying exercise.

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.

The Weekly Text, 1 August 2025: Lesson Six of a Unit on Writing Reviews

Here, in this Weekly Text, is sixth lesson plan, the penultimate lesson of the a seven-lesson unit on writing reviews. This lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on cliche, the utility of which in a lesson on writing reviews I’ll assume needs no explanation. There are two worksheets for this lesson: the first is a mentor text on outlining; the second is a structured outlining worksheet.

And that it’s for this week. Come back next week for the final lesson in this unit.

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.

The Weekly Post, 25 July 2025: Lesson Five of a Unit on Writing Reviews

This week’s Text, as you probably expected if you are a regular user of this blog, is the fifth lesson plan of a seven-lesson unit on writing reviews. This lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the fine arts. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one simple sentence and two comprehension questions. As this lesson is a brainstorming activity, this reading as worksheet is designed to get students thinking about what they will include in their review, and how they would go about 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.

The Weekly Text, 18 July 2025: Lesson Four of a Unit on Writing Reviews

This week’s Text, as headlined above, is the fourth lesson plan of seven lessons and planning materials, for a total of eight consecutive Weekly Texts. This is a lesson on aesthetics and establishing aesthetic criteria for preparing reviews. So, unsurprisingly, the do-now exercise for this lesson is this Cultural worksheet on aesthetics. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences (the second one of which is a longish compound that might best be turned into two sentences for emerging readings and users of English as a second language) and three comprehension questions. It is a short but effective introduction to the concept of aesthetics.

This reading as worksheet is basically a summary of the procedures outlined in the lesson plan. This graphic organizer blank in landscape layout helps students organize their aesthetic criteria for reviews; you might find the teacher’s copy of same useful. Finally, here are six glossaries of aesthetic terms for movies, music, video games, books, graphic novels, and television shows.

And that’s it for another week. I hope you’re enjoying the summer.

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.

The Weekly Text, 11 July 2025: Lesson Three of a Unit on Writing Reviews

OK, moving right along, here is the third lesson plan of the Writing Reviews Unit, this one on gathering and judiciously using evidence in a piece of argumentative writing. The do-now exercise for this lesson is this Cultural Literacy worksheet on genre: This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four simple sentences four questions. Finally, this structured note-taking and outlining worksheet is the primary work of this lesson.

The worksheet is longish by design, and can, as can all the documents in this post, can be easily edited. Like just about everything on this blog, these documents are formatted in Microsoft Word, so fully manipulable.

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.