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, October 27, 2017: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Vlad the Impaler

[Addendum: If you need or want a more recent and comprehensive version–replete with lesson plan and context clues worksheet on the transitive verb impale, click on this hyperlink.]

Although he has gone by many names, Prince Vlad III of Wallachia and his legend have come down to us in a number of forms, including rural folk tales, he is best known from Irish author Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. Since Halloween is right around the corner, here is an Intellectual Devotional reading on Vlad the Impaler along with a reading comprehension worksheet to accompany it.

To complement this exercise, finally, you might want to use this short Cultural Literacy exercise on the Grim Reaper.

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, October 20, 2017: A Reading and Comprehension on Swedish Botanist Carl Linnaeus, Father of the Linnaean System of Taxonomy

For this week’s Text, Mark’s Text Terminal engages in a rare act of promotion, namely, exposing readers of this blog to the beautiful “My Dream for Animals” website. A colleague of mine in this school is involved in this. The photos are gorgeous, and the avowed mission of the site noble.

To accompany the site, here is a reading on Swedish botanist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus together with this reading comprehension worksheet to complement 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, October 13, 2017, Hispanic Heritage Month Week V: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Panama Canal

Today is the final Friday of National Hispanic Heritage Month. This week, Mark’s Text Terminal offers a reading on the Panama Canal together with this comprehension worksheet to accompany it.

I debated myself at some length about whether or not these materials properly fit with the idea of National Hispanic Heritage month. In the final analysis, I think this short article does a nice job of exposing the kind of imperial meddling Latin Americans have dealt with for centuries.

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, October 6, 2017, Hispanic Heritage Month 2017 Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Diego Velazquez

For this, the fourth week of National Hispanic Heritage Month, Mark’s Text Terminal offers this Intellectual Devotional reading on Diego Velazquez. Here is a reading comprehension worksheet to accompany 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, September 29, 2017, Hispanic Heritage Month 2017 Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Miguel De Cervantes

For the third Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month, 2017, Mark’s Text Terminal offers a reading on Miguel de Cervantes and 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.

The Weekly Text, September 22, 2017, Hispanic Heritage Month Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Simon Bolivar

It’s the end of the first week of National Hispanic Heritage Month. Here is a reading on Simon Bolivar from the Intellectual Devotional series. To accompany it, here is a 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.

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.