Category Archives: Worksheets

Classroom documents for student use. Most are structured and scaffolded, and most are pitched at a fundamental level in terms of the questions they ask and the work and understandings they require of students.

A Learning Support on Single Quotation Marks

OK, on a rainy Sunday morning, here is a learning support on using single quotation marks. This is another piece of text culled from Paul Brians’ fine usage guide, Common Errors in English Usage, which you’ll find in its entirety on the Washington State University website under that hyperlink. The textual passage is a single, short paragraph. So there is a wide field for turning this into a worksheet, should you want or need to do so; as is mostly the case on Mark’s Text Terminal, this is a Microsoft Word document, so you can adapt it in any number of ways (including exporting it to another word processor) should you wish.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to be a stickler on this punctuation rule. In fact, it got me into trouble with a principal who didn’t understand the typographical rules and conventions for using double and single quotation marks; I l left an explanation of them, from a different style guide, in his mailbox after reading yet another of his cluttered, illegible memos. He didn’t appreciate it.

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, 16 July 2021: A Lesson Plan on Nations with the Longest Coastlines from The Order of Things

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on nations with the longest coastlines. You’ll need this reading with comprehension questions to teach this lesson. This is material for emerging reader, students with reading-related learning disorders, and English language learners.

This is a short and simple reading comprehension lesson with the usual twist on these lessons adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s superb reference book, The Order of Things: students will deal with both numbers and words (often a challenging endeavor for some readers) in the reading in a relatively low-stakes environment. For more about these lessons, see the “About Posts & Texts” page, linked to below the masthead on this blog’s homepage.

That’s it for this week, Stay cool and stay safe,

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.

Cultural Literacy: Catherine the Great

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Catherine the Great. To my surprise, this is the first material on the Empress I have published on this blog.

She is without question a world-historical figure, and probably of interest to a certain type of student, probably female. In any case, I’ll make a point of producing a couple of more posts about it.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Blast/o

Here is a worksheet on the Greek word root blasto/o. It means “cell, cell layer, immature cell, and “primitive bud.”

As you will see when you read the words under review, this isn’t a root that produces a lot of high-frequency words in English. But these words, if the the book from which the text for this document is drawn can be trusted, these words do turn up on the SAT. And if you have students planning careers in the health care professions? This is definitely a word root they should know.

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.

Zenger Trial

Here is a reading on the Zenger Trial along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This is a relatively short reading as selections from the Intellectual Devotional series go, but the worksheet conforms to this blog’s standard: eight vocabulary words to define, eight comprehension questions, and three “additional facts” questions.

This piece of litigation from colonial-era America was barely on my radar screen until it popped up as a question on the United States history College Level Examination (CLEP) test. To summarize even beyond the limits of this short reading, John Peter Zenger published a newspaper in New York City, The New York Weekly Journal. Zenger used his paper to criticize the colonial governor of New York, William Cosby. Cosby accused Zenger of libel and sedition and in November of  However, a grand jury refused to indict Zenger (which, if memory serves, indicated Cosby’s popularity). In 1735, Zenger was acquitted of the charges against him. His case, in American history, is often cited as the birth of the principle of free press in the United States.

In other words, in many respects, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution has its roots in the Zenger Affair.

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.

Mellifluous (adj)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective mellifluous. It means “having a smooth rich flow <a mellifluous voice> and “filled with something (as honey) that sweetens.”

It’s not a word used with any real frequency in English. But when you need it–as when it’s time to express one’s feelings about, say, Nina Simone’s voice–well, nothing else will quite do, you know?

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.

A Learning Support on Using Quotation Marks

Here is a learning support on using quotation marks. This is quite a bit of text, some of which, especially the material on typography and word processing software, but that’s only a paragraph, so you’re still stuck with a two-page document.

In any case, this is, to flog this tiresome point again, a Microsoft Word document. In other words, you can do just about anything you want with it. I can see how it could be broken into several pieces and those pieces made into practice worksheets. It’s yours now.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Cause Celebre

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the noun cause celebre. It means, as I am sure you know, “a legal case that excites widespread interest” and “a notorious person, thing, incident, or episode.”

This Gallicism isn’t exactly the most commonly used word in the the language, but educated people do use it. I’ll hazard a guess that one wouldn’t have far to look in major metropolitan newspapers or literary magazines like The Atlantic, Harpers, or The New Yorker to see this word in action. If nothing else, when children and adolescents make foolish choices, as the often do, this is the right word to describe them, especially in its latter sense.

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.

New York City Subways

Here is a reading on the New York City subways along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

This is a rudimentary history of the system, though it does offer some room for analysis, particularly the paragraph that begins “Since their opening, New York’s subways have functioned as a sort of bellwether for the city’s overall condition.” In any event, if you happen to work as a teacher in New York City, and serve a special needs population, I can just about guarantee you that at some point you will encounter a student, if you haven’t already, whose all-consuming, even obsessive, interest in the subway system will make these documents stand as high-interest material. Ergo, I have tagged them 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.

Common Errors in English Usage: Envious and Jealous

Here is a worksheet on distinguishing the adjectives envious and jealous. The distinction is thin, but as usual, Paul Brians does a nice job in making the distinction clear: you are envious of what others have, but you become jealous when you are trying to hold on to what you have.

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.