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, July 1, 2016: A Trove of Documents for a Professional Development Inquiry into Executive Skills

Are you done with the 2015-2016 school year? I gather that our school year here in New York City goes much later than other districts in the United States. Our last day was Tuesday the 28th.

So it’s summer break! I always schedule my share of fun for these months, but I also work some–because I want to. You can continue to look for the Weekly Text at Mark’s Text Terminal, because I only plan to miss three Fridays during the summer.

Over the years, as an employee of the New York City Department of Education, I’ve experienced a mixed bag of professional development sessions. A few years ago, at least in the school in which I presently serve, teachers were responsible for performing professional inquiry groups, which selected its own topic for, well, inquiry, and analysis, germane to the work we do, but obviously for improving pedagogy. For this week, then, here are–in three separate links–the raw materials for a professional development presentation on executive skills and function I wrote for the group I joined in the 2011-2012 school year.

First up are the the proposal for this inquiry group, and a learning support for teachers, which are the teacher’s materials for this presentation; second, here are four student surveys to assess executive skills; third, and finally, here is a letter explaining these surveys to students. I adapted the student surveys from Ellen Galinsky’s excellent book Mind in the Making.

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, March 24, 2016: A Learning Support on the Use of Comparative and Superlative Adjectives

We’re off for Good Friday tomorrow, so I’m posting this week’s text this (Thursday) morning, so that I can spend the day doing something else besides looking at my computer screen–maybe looking at blue skies and budding trees.

So–very quickly–here is learning support on the formation of comparative and superlative adjectives that I use with a couple of lessons from my adjectives unit. As always, if you find it useful, I’d like to hear your comments.

And Happy Passover, Happy Easter, and Happy Spring!

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.

The Weekly Text, March 18, 2016: Three Context Clues Worksheets on Fanatic (n), Fanaticism (n), and Fanatical (adj)

Here are three context clues worksheets for the words fanatic, fanaticism, and fanatical. I thought these words appropriate in this gruesome political campaign season. If you haven’t dealt with these worksheets before, you may want to consult the Focus on One Word Worksheets Users’ Manual that will help explain why these read and look the way they 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, March 11, 2016: A Learning Support on Latinisms and Latin Abbreviations

Phew, busy week. I’ll keep this short so I can sustain some stamina to get through this afternoon’s round (after being here last evening until almost eight for same) of parent-teacher conferences.

So, here is a learning support for Latinisms and Latin abbreviations that commonly appear in English expository prose. These terms often trip up students, and in any case, I believe strongly that we ought to be teaching, as part of a broader curriculum for teaching writing, the more common of these, like e.g. and i.e., if not viz. and Q.E.D.

But what do you think? Should we bother with this at all? I welcome (i.e. seek, beg for, pursue, wheedle after, crave) your comments.

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, March 4, 2016: Two Worksheets on the Latin Word Roots Mat, Matri, Mater, and Patr, Patri, Pater

Next week is another round of parent-teacher conferences, so I am busily preparing for them–amid the usual work adjusting readings for students, developing new materials for them, etc. I’ll keep this week’s text short and basic, and spare you the exposition.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a word root worksheet, so here are two: the first one is Latin word roots mat, matri, and mater which I am confident you know means mother; the second one is for the Latin word roots patr, patri and pater, which means not just father, but also fatherland. If you’re not familiar already with these worksheets, which I use for vocabulary building with the struggling readers I serve, than you might need to consult the Word Root Worksheets Users’ Manual.

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, February 26, 2016, Black History Month Week III: Documents on Melvin B. Tolson and His Involvement with the Communist Party

One of the subtexts in The Great Debaters is Melvin B. Tolson’s political organizing, specifically his commitment to helping African American sharecroppers and workers achieve something like social and economic equity in the Jim Crow South. In the film, Mr. Tolson (again, Denzel Washington plays him) is seen meeting with African American farmers, which is soon broken up by the KKK. The redneck sheriff, played with drawling, ignorant, aplomb by John Heard, holds Mr. Tolson’s political and social activism over his head, and the viewer understands that Melvin B. Tolson is probably a communist.

Anyone who had read the novel Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison or, more specific and literal to the subject, Richard Wright’s memoir Black Boy, has some background knowledge on the relationship between African Americans and the Communist Party, particularly in the 1930s.

Here, in the last of three Weekly Texts for Black History Month, is a reading on the allure of the Communist Party USA for African Americans, particularly in the 1930s. I understand that in certain school districts, this reading may well be forbidden fruit. That being so does not, I think, diminish the importance of understanding this part of our American past. I would think for educators teaching units on either Invisible Man or Black Boy. this reading would be de rigueur.

And that’s what I have to offer for Black History Month, 2016. As always, if you used any of this material, I hope you found it helpful; I would, again, as always, be grateful to hear from you about what worked or didn’t in your use of these readings.

Until next week….

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.

The Weekly Text, February 12, 2016, Black History Month Week II: Two Readings on Melvin B. Tolson and James L. Farmer Jr.

The Weekly Text for this week follows last week’s on readings related to Denzel Washington’s film The Great Debaters. This is the second of three entries on this unit; because I will not post a Weekly Text for February 19th (we have President’s Day Week off for a mid-winter break), I’ll post two readings here this week.

The first is a reading on Melvin B. Tolson, the peripatetic (although he was associated with Wiley College and other post-secondary institutions in the Southwestern United States, he went to Columbia to pursue a graduate degree in 1930-31, was present at the end of the Harlem Renaissance, and counted Langston Hughes among his close friends) poet and political organizer who coached the legendary Wiley Debate Team of 1935.

Following the article on Mr. Tolson, there is a reading on one of his mentees, the legendary civil rights activist, James L. Farmer, Jr. Mr. Farmer’s list of accomplishments is substantial. He was a great American whose efforts made this nation a more just and decent place.

If these are useful to you, I’d be much obliged if you’d leave a comment explaining how or why.

Until February 26th….

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, February 5, 2016, Black History Month Week I: A Reading on Historically Black Colleges and Universities

February is Black History Month. Initiated by Carter G. Woodson in 1926, Black History Month is justly a staple in school curricula in the United States. Far, far be it from me to second-guess Dr. Woodson or any of the proponents of Black History Month, but I have never been entirely at ease with the concept of one month of the year set aside for the study of the myriad and vital contributions Americans of African descent have made to our nation, because I think it is insufficient. It seems to me, when studying the history of the United States from the colonial period to yesterday, every month ought to be Black History Month. African Americans are an integral part of the history of the United States, and the U.S. History curriculum really ought to reflect that.

At the same time, I appreciate the opportunity to teach material that isn’t part of the standard curriculum. For the next four weeks, I’ll post reading assignments from a unit I developed to attend the film The Great Debatersdirected by and starring Denzel Washington. After watching the movie for the first time, it struck me that it would serve nicely as the foundation of a unit on both Black History and using prior knowledge to understand new material. I outlined a unit plan, fleshed it out, and began using it to great success. I’ve yet to present it to a class that wasn’t immediately interested in and engaged by the material–it has been that successful with the students I serve. The fundamental educative goal for this unit is to provide students with prior knowledge of the personalities and events–to wit, the 1935 Wiley College Debate Team led by Melvin B. Tolson–by way of reading comprehension worksheets and discussion in class. The first five lessons of the unit work to prepare students for a viewing of the film.

So, here, in the first of three Weekly Texts on The Great Debaters, is the first reading from the unit, on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

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, January 29, 2016: Two Learning Supports on Transition Words

Yesterday was the final day of New York State’s biannual exercise in standardized testing, the Regents Examinations.  I’ve had time to revise a structured research paper unit on the Holocaust I developed a few years ago to introduce struggling students to methods for undertaking such a project. I found two learning supports for using transition words in expository prose amid this unit (I hadn’t looked at it in a couple of years), which are distinct only in their layout.

The second one, in outline form, might well be useful in a lesson or short unit on outlining. I’m pondering how I might work with it that way. If you see something effective in it for work on outlining, perhaps this structured outlining blank will be of some value to 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, January 22, 2016: Two Context Clues Worksheets on the Adjective Empirical and the Noun Empiricism

Here, as I mentioned last week, are two context clues worksheets on the words empirical and empiricism. These sat on my work table for months before I finally summoned the will to use them a couple of weeks ago in two of my classes. I avoided them because I’d erroneously assumed that these words, or the concepts they represent, were simply too abstract for the struggling and often disengaged learners I serve.

Once I started leading the students through them, however,  I realized we were in one of those  serendipitous “teachable moments.” To our surprise. a series of Socratic exchanges quickly yielded–on both worksheets, which we completed, interestingly, on two non-successive days–definitions that were within two or three words of those in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (which, incidentally, is the dictionary I use to guide me when I write sentences for these kinds of context clues worksheets). We all, I think, found this gratifying.

Immediately after these classes, when I’d realized what had happened, I grabbed my notebook and wrote down the sequence of questions I asked to guide students through these two exercises. I shaped them into typescript; I’ve included them at the bottom of the two worksheets linked to above.

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.