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, September 15, 2017, Hispanic Heritage Month 2017 Week I: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Soccer Legend Pele

Hispanic Heritage Month begins today, so for the next five Fridays, I’ll post readings and comprehension worksheets in its honor. To kick off the month, here are an Intellectual Devotional reading on Pele, the legendary Brazilian soccer star, and a comprehension worksheet to complement it. This should be relatively high interest material, particularly for kids from Latin America who follow soccer–as so many of the students I serve do.

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, September 8, 2017: Two Context Clues Worksheets on Wholesale and Retail as Adjectives

School started this week, and I’d hoped to get something big and splashy up for this Friday. Indeed, I’m working on a revision this Weekly Text, from August 28, 2015, on Daniel Willingham’s First Demonstration of Memory, but I’m not quite done with it. However, circumstances intruded, so I have very little to offer this week. Next Friday begins National Hispanic Heritage Month for 2017, so I’ll be posting, as last year, four readings and comprehension worksheets in observance of its four week span.

Because I work in a business-themed high school in the Financial District in New York City, I found it necessary to develop these two context clues worksheets on the words wholesale and retail relatively early on in my tenure here. They’re used as adjectives and adverbs in these exercises. Should you choose to engineer these worksheets further, these words can be used as verbs and nouns as well.

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, September 1, 2017: A Complete Lesson Plan on the Most Commonly Used Prepositions

Of the seven units on the parts of speech I’ve built, the one on prepositions is the shortest. As I start writing this week’s Text, I realize that with this post I’ve already published three of the seven lessons in the unit–and one of them just last week.

This is the third lesson in the unit, on working with commonly used prepositions. There are, as with most of the lessons I post here, two do-now, Everyday Edit exercises to start the lesson, the first on the “Miracle Worker,” Anne Sullivan and the second on James Forten, a free Black man in Philadelphia. The center of this lesson is this scaffolded worksheet on working with commonly used prepositions. To complete it, students will benefit from access to this learning support on using prepositions, prepositional phrases, and compound prepositions. Finally, while delivering this lesson, I’m confident that you’ll find the teacher’s copy and answer key helpful.

That’s it. School starts on Tuesday! I hope the school year starts well for you.

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, August 25, 2017: A Lesson Plan on Using Prepositions with Pronouns in the Objective Case

Last spring, while teaching my unit on prepositions, I found I needed to revise and strengthen this lesson plan on using prepositions with pronouns in the objective case; as long as I had it out, I duplicated and set it aside for a future text, and that future has arrived, so here it is as a Weekly Text.

To teach this lesson you’ll need the two do-now exercises (and, as I’ve written here before, if you like Everyday Edits, the good people at Education World generously give them away), the first of which is an Everyday Edit on Charles Drew; the second, another Everyday Edit, this one on the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, you may need if classroom exigencies extend this lesson into a second day. The mainstay of this lesson is this scaffolded worksheet on using prepositions with the objective case of pronouns. Your students and you will probably find useful this learning support to accompany the worksheet.

I design my worksheets, as you’ll see explained in the About Weekly Texts on the home page banner, so that I can insert students’ names in them as both subject and object noun. This worksheet is, in terms of these insertions, complicated sufficiently that I’ve decided to include in this post this finished copy, ready for classroom use, of the worksheet to demonstrate how to fill the asterisks with subject and object nouns in the worksheet itself. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the worksheet which serves as the answer key as well.

That’s it. I hope this lesson is useful to you, and not marred by its prolixity.

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, August 3, 2017: Two Context Clues Worksheets on Descend (vi/vt) and Descendant (n)

Here are two context clues worksheets on the verb descend and the noun descendant. As you will infer from the choice of the noun, these are the definitions of these words that relate to origins rather than moving in a downward direction. I like to use these early in the year in global studies classes.

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, July 28, 2017: Two Context Clues Worksheets on Prolix (adj) and Prolixity (n)

At the moment, I’m busily developing a unit on argumentation for the fall semester at my school. Ergo, This week’s Text is a quick one, namely these two context clues worksheets on the adjective prolix and the noun prolixity. I can tell you from my experience working in a couple of different college writing centers that students are regularly dispatched to those old-fashioned help desks for prolixity. Students ought to know what these words mean, in any case, especially students planning to major in subjects in the humanities in college–which require a lot of (good) writing.

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.

A Midsummer Text: Five Worksheets on Differentiating the Homophones Who’s and Whose

I’ve been working on a series of new homophone worksheets, including these five on the who’s and whose and this learning support to accompany them.

I assume you see these words confused regularly, as they are two of the most commonly confused homophones in the English language. Writing these worksheets, I’m afraid I let the material get away from me. Endeavoring to create materials that helped students form their own, comprehensive, understanding of these two words, I wrote a lot of text that I realized, after it was down on paper, was too much information for worksheet instructions. I turned quite a bit of the text into the learning support post in this Text. However, the worksheets themselves still may be prolix by virtue of the still-lengthy definitions of these two words and their definitions,

In any case, these are Word documents, so you may manipulate them for your use.

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, July 21, 2017: A Lesson Plan on Using the Degrees of Adjectives

This week’s Text is a complete lesson plan on using the degrees of adjectives. To refresh your memory, the three degrees of adjectives are the positive (big), the comparative (bigger) and the superlative, (biggest). Two do-now exercises open this unit, the first a parsing sentences worksheet on verbs and the second a Cultural Literacy Worksheet on acronyms. (I include as a matter of course two do-now exercises in the event that a lesson runs into a second day because of interruptions.) The mainstay of the lesson is this scaffolded worksheet on using the three degrees of adjectives. You may also want to use this learning support on the degrees of adjectives. Finally, you might find the teacher’s copy of the worksheet useful while giving this lesson.

Finally, this lesson affords you an opportunity, should you care to emphasize it, to point out to students that they will always, after the comparative adjective, use the conjunction than and not the adverb then.

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, July 14, 2017: Two Context Clues Worksheets on Deify (v) and Deity (n)

While I like to think Mark’s Text Terminal adheres to relatively high standards in the tone it sets and the material it presents, I fear this week may be an exception to that rule (if indeed it exists, since I’m not necessarily the best or most objective judge, in the final analysis, of my own work). I’m having too much fun after a long and difficult school year to spend too much time this morning on a blog post; today I’m taking a day trip up to the charming town of Beacon, New York.

Here are two context clues on the verb deify and the noun deity. N.B. that deify is used only transitively; in other words, don’t forget your direct objects–you must deify someone or something, in order to have a deity.

I think these are a couple of words high school students really ought to know. In any case, this pair provides you an opportunity to make connections between two parts of speech–verbs and nouns.

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, July 7, 2017: A Lesson Plan on Adverbs Modifying Verbs

One week into the summer break, and I am taking advantage of everything New York City has to offer in this season, including the wonderful Jazzmobile, one of the greatest cultural institutions in our city, which obviously boasts so many of them. If you’re coming into the Five Boroughs from elsewhere, please know this: Jazzmobile concerts are free, held in some of our most beautiful parks, and superlative. If you go, make sure you put a few bucks in the collection bucket. Jazzmobile presents world-class musicians, and to see them in a club like the Village Vanguard or the Blue Note would cost you real money.

OK, now back to the English Language Arts Desk. This week’s Text is a complete lesson plan on adverbs modifying verbs. This lesson begins with one of two do-now exercises (or both if the lesson runs into a second day), the first a Cultural Literacy Worksheet on stereotypes, and the second a parsing sentences worksheet on adverbs. You might find this word bank of adverbs useful as a learning support. The mainstay of the lesson is this scaffolded worksheet on adverbs modifying verbs. Finally, you may find this teacher’s copy of the worksheet helps you in delivering this lesson.

That’s it. I hope you are enjoying your 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.