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.

Cultural Literacy: Sinclair Lewis

Posted on October 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

Is Sinclair Lewis taught at the high school level? I don’t remember encountering him, with Babbitt, until I was well into my twenties. He was the first writer from the United States to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. I don’t remember seeing his books around the high school in which I served for ten years.

If you just want to introduce him to your students, or settle them after a class change, or both, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Sinclair Lewis that shouldn’t take anybody long.

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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Personal Identity

Posted on October 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

Let me start with the documents, to wit this reading on personal identity and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The more I think about the conceptual and personal issues attached to personal identity, and how self-identifying has empowered oppressed communities, the more I think I would like to build either a short unit or a long lesson around these documents. If that interests you, please read on.

It’s one of those big philosophical and psychological concepts, but in the realm of the classroom teacher, individuation means that students have begun the process of discovering the self, or themselves, if you prefer. In any case, identity is important. To whatever extent we can, I think we are intellectually and morally obliged to abet this process in kids.

Especially now, when social media appear, as an emerging scholarly discourse indicates, to erode individuation. If you’re interested, this stylish and literate blog post from The Literary Blues supplies a nice basic outline of the means by which social media diminishes individualism. A lesson or unit on personal identity would proceed most effectively, I submit, if it addressed these critical issues of identity and social media.

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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Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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Cultural Literacy: Lost Generation

Posted on October 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

Because there has been a surge of interest in the United States in, well, leaving the United States, now seems like a perfect time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Lost Generation, that group of American writers and artists who spend the 1920s in Paris. Among this group, as you may know, was Ernest Hemingway.

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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Forebear (n)

Posted on October 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

Because it’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today, and because it is a nice solid noun that turns up in several registers of discourse in English, here is a context clues worksheet on the noun forebear. N.B. that Merriam-Webster advises that this noun is generally used in the plural; I’ve used it that way in this worksheet in all the context clues sentences.

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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Common Errors in English Usage: Regime (n), Regimen (n)

Posted on October 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

They are two commonly used words in English, so here is a worksheet on differentiating the use of the nouns regime and regimen–two nouns that look a lot alike, but mean different things, indeed quite different things. So, if you want to start with a new exercise regimen, don’t call it a regime, which better applies where politics and government are concerned.

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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Akbar the Great

Posted on October 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

He’s an important, indeed representative figure, of the Mughal Empire, so here is a reading on Akbar the Great along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

At this writing, with the rising tide of Hindu Nationalism engendered by the current Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), this is a timely reading. That the BJP has worked to revise Indian social studies texts to minimize and trivialize the role of Muslims (like Akbar) makes this vital reading.

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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Nonpareil (adj)

Posted on October 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

I don’t think I can defend it as a word students must know, but since it popped up as Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day on a morning when I felt like writing one, I can offer you this context clues worksheet on the adjective nonpareil. In addition to describing a certain kind of confection (“a small flat disk of chocolate covered with white sugar pellets” or “sugar in small pellets of various colors”–in other words, think of Nestle’s Sno-caps at the movie theater), this worksheet, using context, uses the definition “an individual of unequaled excellence” and “paragon.”

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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Cultural Literacy: First Amendment

Posted on October 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. If now isn’t a good time to spend some time reading, thinking, and writing about the rights guaranteed by this Amendment, I don’t know when would be.

If I were teaching this important topic in civics this fall, I would be sure to emphasize the Establishment Clause as well as the guarantee of the right “of the people peaceably to assemble.” As Kevin Phillips’ nightmare scenario of an American Theocracy begins to advance to lived reality, the Establishment Clause becomes a very important topic of study. As far as peaceably assembling, that right appears to have been abrogated.

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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Enhance (vt)

Posted on October 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb enhance. It’s only used transitively. I doubt there is any question about the fact that this is a word high school students should know and be able to use by the time they receive their diplomas.

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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The Weekly Text, October 2, 2020, Hispanic Heritage Month 2020 Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Teresa of Avila

Posted on October 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

Ok, for Week III of Hispanic Heritage Month 2020, and for the Weekly Text from Mark’s Text Terminal for October 2, 2020, here is a reading on Teresa of Avila along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Teresa was essentially a sixteenth-century Catholic mystic. Her mysticism, unsurprisingly, brought her to the attention of the Inquisition. She founded a religious order; as the reading explains, she was, in the final analysis, an influential figure in Catholic theology. If you want to move beyond the relatively basic comprehension questions on the worksheet, you–and more importantly, your students–can consider some of the concepts present in Teresa’s story: religious law, orthodoxy, mysticism, feminism and women’s role in the Church, among others.

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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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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