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, 25 April 2025: A Lesson Plan on the Latin Word Root -Cide

Posted on April 25, 2025 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Latin word root -cide. It means, to kill, which is why you’ll find it in such relatively high-frequency English words as germicide, insecticide, and genocide–all present on this scaffolded worksheet. This lesson opens with this context clues worksheet on the noun mortality  which, I hope, points the way toward the meaning of the word root that is 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.

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The Weekly Text, 11 April 2025: A Lesson Plan on Poker from The Order of Things

Posted on April 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is the last, for now, of 50 lessons that I adapted during the pandemic from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s comprehensive reference book The Order of Things.

So here is a lesson plan on poker, which, as I have reminded users of this blog when I posted each of these 50 lessons, is written for striving readers and/or students who struggle with interpreting and in general dealing with two symbolic systems–in this case numbers and letters–at the same time. This list as reading and comprehension questions serves as the worksheet for this lesson. It includes a relatively complicated list of denominations of poker chips and a hierarchy of winning hands from highest to lowest. As I write this, having never used this lesson, I find myself wondering if a few hands of poker would serve as a satisfying and edifying form of application for this 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.

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The Weekly Text, 4 April 2025: A Lesson Plan on the Greek Word Roots -Cracy and -Crat

Posted on April 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is this lesson plan on the Greek word roots -cracy and -crat, which mean government, rule, and power. I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the verb administer, which I hope, perhaps naively or erroneously, points the way toward the meaning of these two very productive roots. We get aristocracy, democrat, meritocracy, and bureaucracy from these roots; all are included on this scaffolded worksheet, which is the gravamen of the 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, 28 March 2025, Women’s History Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Edith Wharton

Posted on March 28, 2025 | Leave a comment

For the fourth and final Friday of Women’s History Month 2025, here is a reading on Edith Wharton with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

And that is it for Women’s History Month for 2025.

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 March 2025, Women’s History Month Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Dorothea Lange

Posted on March 21, 2025 | Leave a comment

For the third week of Women’s History Month 2025, here is a reading on Dorothea Lange along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. If you have any students interested in photography, particularly the history of the medium, this material on Dorothea Lange, who was a contemporary and friend of Ansel Adams, should do the trick.

If you want to dig deeper–or your student does–here is a series of eleven worksheets on famous photographers, along with a twelfth on Gordon Parks that is anything but an afterthought–indeed, it was the first of these I prepared.

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 March 2025, Women’s History Month Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Benazir Bhutto

Posted on March 14, 2025 | Leave a comment

For the second Friday of Women’s History Month 2025, the Weekly Text from Mark’s Text Terminal is this reading on Benazir Bhutto along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. You may recall, if you are of a certain age, that she served twice as Prime Minister of Pakistan, from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996.

She was, alas, assassinated in 2007.

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 March 2025, Women’s History Month Week I: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Harriet Tubman

Posted on March 7, 2025 | Leave a comment

OK, we’ve rounded to corner to March, during which Mark’s Text Terminal, conforming to the latest consensus, observes Women’s History Month. The first Weekly Text for this month is this reading on Harriet Tubman 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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The Weekly Text, 28 February 2025, Black History Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Langston Hughes

Posted on February 28, 2025 | Leave a comment

For the final Friday of Black History Month 2025, the Weekly Text from Mark’s Text Terminal is this reading on Langston Hughes along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. These documents join a solid body of material by and about Langston Hughes on this blog.; to find others, just search his name on the home page.

And now we move on to Women’s History Month 2025 in March.

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 February 2025, Black History Month Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on 2Pac and Biggie

Posted on February 21, 2025 | Leave a comment

For the third week of Black History Month 2025 here is a reading on 2pac and Biggie along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

At this point, this blog is heavily stocked with materials excerpted and adapted from David S. Kidder and Noah Oppenheim’s series of books under the title of The Intellectual Devotional. There are five in all of these books: the first one, simply called The Intellectual Devotional, then one volume each (under the title The Intellectual Devotional) on American History, Biographies, Health, and Modern Culture. All of this is a long way of explaining that some readings repeat, with only slight variations, in more than one volume of this series; there is, ergo, another version of this material on this blog that I published back in 2018.

It goes without saying that in some places, this will particularly high-interest material. Thus, I have tagged it as such.

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 February 2025, Black History Month Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Harlem Renaissance

Posted on February 14, 2025 | Leave a comment

For the second month of Black History Month 2025, here is a reading on the Harlem Renaissance with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This is a useful, one-page survey of key events and personalities of the Harlem Renaissance. In the end, however, it is only an introduction to one of the most fertile and consequential periods in American cultural 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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