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, January 15, 2016: Two Glossaries on the Parts of Speech

Posted on January 15, 2016 | Leave a comment

It has been a hectic week, characteristic of January in this school, which is always a concatenation of testing and extracurricular activities. For this week’s text, I offer up a couple of learning supports. The first is a basic glossary of the parts of the speech. This version of this support contains simple descriptions of each of the parts of speech with a few spare examples of their use. The second is a supported glossary of the parts of speech which includes a fuller description of each part of speech, along with some sentences that demonstrate their use.

If you use these, as always, I’d very much like to hear how; moreover, I’d like to hear from you if you have any suggestions about how I might further develop or improve these learning supports–or how you have done so.

Earlier this week, I had a very interesting experience teaching the words empirical and empiricism, by way of context clues worksheets, to some of the struggling readers and learners whom I serve. In both of the classes in which I used these worksheets, students, secondary to my Socratic questioning, were able to infer the meanings of both of these highly abstract words. Next week or the week after, as time permits, I plan to post these worksheets with a blog post on the line of questioning I used to elicit the meanings of these words.

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, January 8, 2016: A Lesson Plan on Teaching the Ordinal Centuries

Posted on January 8, 2016 | Leave a comment

Over the years, I have seen students suffer persistent confusion over the difference between the cardinal (counting numbers) and ordinal (numbers that place things in rank or order) numbers historians, and therefore social studies teachers, use to name and number centuries. It goes without saying, I assume, that a lack of understanding of this basic means of understanding historical time leads to confusion about the scope, sequence and, indeed, sweep of history. Understanding this discourse is by any standard, I should think, necessary for any basic understanding of what is going on in a social studies classroom.

Yet, I have not seen this way of understanding historical time taught explicitly in my thirteen years as a social studies/English/special education teacher.

So, fresh from Mark’s Text Terminal for the New Year, here is a complete lesson plan on teaching the ordinal centuries. Under this link you’ll find a lesson plan, two context clues for the noun phrase cardinal number and the adjective ordinal (and you may want to take a look at the Focus on One Word Worksheets Users’ Manual to work with those), and a scaffolded 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, December 18, 2015: A Lesson Plan on Using Conjunctions

Posted on December 18, 2015 | Leave a comment

Here is the final Weekly Text of 2015. I plan to avoid, to the greatest extent possible over the holiday break, this computer screen. I’ve just completed the final piece of my cycle of units on the parts of speech, an eight-lesson unit on conjunctions (I’ve previously posted the learning support on the most commonly used conjunctions that you’ll very likely need to use the material on this post).

So,  here is the second lesson on conjunctions from this unit, which gives struggling students some structured and independent practice at using the coordinating conjunctions. While this Word document includes the lesson plan, first do-now exercise (a homophone worksheet which you may need the Homophone Worksheets Users’ Manual to use), a structured worksheet, and a teacher’s answer key, it does not include the second do-now worksheet, an Everyday Edit on Beethoven. Incidentally, if you like this Everyday Edit, you can find more of them at the Education World Everyday Edits page, where the folks who operate that site generously give them away as tear-offs.

That’s it! I wish you and yours a joyous holiday season. I’ll see you again in the New Year.

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, December 11, 2015: A Learning Support on the Most Commonly Used Prepositions

Posted on December 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

After a long absence for a basic civic responsibility, I am back at work, teaching and writing lesson plans. It’s the end of a marking period, and my students, to my great surprise, are glad to have me back. So I’m quite busy trying to catch up with paperwork and engage my students in creating meaning. Here, in the penultimate text for 2015 (I don’t plan to post Weekly Texts over the holiday break) is a learning support for the most commonly used prepositions in the English language.

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, December 4, 2015: A Worksheet on the Greek Word Root Phobia

Posted on December 4, 2015 | Leave a comment

OK, here’s a quick weekly text, starting with a context clues worksheet on the noun triskaidedaphobia. This might well serve as a template for the context clues worksheet in general–you will notice, as your students probably will, that this word means fear of the number 13. I believe the context for inferring meaning is fairly strong in these sentences.

This might also be a good time to use this worksheet on the Greek word root phobia, the utility of which I expect is obvious. This root shows up in so many words in English that knowledge of it is nothing short of de rigeur. 

Addendum, May 28, 2019. Here is a comprehensive list of phobias from the pages of the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) that might interest your students; kids to tend to find this kind of thing fascinating.

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, November 25, 2015: Two Context Clues Worksheets on the Noun Fiction and the Verb Fictionalize

Posted on November 25, 2015 | Leave a comment

Here’s a rare Weekly Text on a Wednesday, which I post now so that I can enjoy four solid days away from this computer screen. You might find these two context clues worksheets on the noun fiction and the verb fictionalize useful.

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, November 20, 2015: A Lesson Plan on Malapropisms

Posted on November 20, 2015 | Leave a comment

As I understand it, one of the most difficult things for English language learners to understand and master are the manifold idioms in the language, particularly in American English. While my knowledge of this is anecdotal (among other things, I hear that’s the part of the ESL test on which students fare most poorly), not the best kind of evidence for any kind of conclusion about this problem area of instruction, I don’t have any trouble imagining that some of the struggling learners I work with would find it a challenge to deal with the figurative and abstract aspects of idioms in American English.

So I have become interested in the idiom as a way of teaching figurative language, and to teach the difference between figurative and literal language. I’m somewhat circumspect about posting this first lesson from a unit that I’ve provisionally titled “How Not to Talk Like the Guys in ‘Dumb and Dumber'” for a couple of reasons. First, I thereby admit that I’ve watched both the “Dumb and Dumber” movies a sufficient number of times to have had them inspire me to develop instructional material–something that doesn’t quite fit the cut of the intellectual jib (to pervert an idiom slightly)  I seek to present on Mark’s Text Terminal. The other reason is that this lesson, and the other four I’m working on for this short unit, combine instruction on idioms with material, which in this first lesson is only implied, on malapropisms.

Anyway, I’d like to hear from you if this is something you’ve found useful per se, or if you modified it for your students and how, or if you think it is just silly. My students did, but they also learned to understand and use an extremely common idiom in American English, which is prior knowledge I believe they can call up to understand and use other idioms.

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, November 13, 2015: A Lesson Plan on the Elements of a Declarative Sentence

Posted on November 13, 2015 | Leave a comment

For the second year, as I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I have struggled to assemble a structured and scaffolded unit on writing the five-paragraph essay for the eight-week special institute class required of freshmen in my school. The premise of the exercise–that all there is to be learned about composing five-paragraph essays–and therefore, I guess, all essays–can be learned in eight class meetings has always struck me as…well, to put it as charitably as possible, problematic. This approach is especially problematic for the struggling learners I serve.

So, I’ve worked at creating a unit that leads students who struggle with writing and reading, and don’t really understand the elements of grammatically complete sentence, to an understanding of how to write expository prose. My own sense remains that for the students I work with, this material would be best presented seriatim in daily classroom sessions rather than once a week, and that it should be presented one step at a time over two eight-lesson units rather than one. The five-paragraph essay is not the only form of expository writing students will need to learn, so why not make that form part of a broader and deeper strategy on teaching writing?

When I went through the first unit just now, I found that I hadn’t made the kind of progress on it that I’d hoped. In any case, I think these units will undergo revision each time I use them to meet the need the students I work with. On that note, here is a lesson on the elements of a declarative sentence, the first from my unit on writing the five-paragraph essay.

N.B., please, that in several of the sentence setups in exercises one through eight have a series of asterisks where the subject should be. This is so you may, if you choose, insert names of your students for use as subjects, and the same is true of the parsing sentences do-now work that opens the lesson. Please see the About Weekly Texts page for the rationale behind this.

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, November 6, 2015: Two Paragraph Analysis Worksheets

Posted on November 6, 2015 | Leave a comment

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been asked to participate in a special institute class in my school on writing the five-paragraph essay. I find this approach, particularly for the struggling students I serve, confining and tedious. Nonetheless, I set out this year to write my own scaffolded curriculum for this class, which meets once a week. Here are two paragraph analysis worksheets that I developed to use in helping students understand the underlying structure of paragraphs. The reading is high interest, and the questions basic.

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, October 30, 2015: A Learning Support on Pronouns and Case

Posted on October 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

For this week, I offer this learning support on pronouns and case. I’d hoped to have some new lesson plans prepared to post here, but the civic responsibility of jury duty has occupied my time and prevented me from working on them.

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.

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