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.

Independent Practice: Islam

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is an independent practice (i.e. homework) worksheet on Islam. It’s a short reading with a few questions. While I wrote it to send home as homework, it could be used as the basis for a lesson on the many conceptual aspects of Islam students should probably understand: monotheism, prophets and prophecy, obligation, religious and otherwise, intellectual and religious lineage, and sectarianism, just to name a few.

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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Corrupt (adj), Corrupt (vi/vt), Corruption (n)

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

For reasons that I’ll assume are obvious (given my best efforts to temper this, my little blog has taken a modest slide into political commentary of late, owing entirely to my frustration with the insanity and idiocy of this nation’s president). it seems to me a perfect time to post three context clues worksheets, the first on corrupt as an adjective, the second on the same word as a verb (which is used both intransitively and transitively), and, finally, on the noun corruption.

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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Aesop’s Fables: “The Ass, The Fox, and The Lion”

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

For younger kids, or for English language learners, here is a lesson plan on Aesop’s fable “The Ass, The Fox, and The Lion” and its accompanying reading with comprehension and interpretive questions in worksheet form. If nothing else, I expect (though perhaps I project because I got such a kick out of this as a young reader) younger kids will enjoy hearing a donkey called an “ass.”

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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Cultural Literacy: Limerick

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here’s a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the limerick as a poetic form. This might be something to use with English language learners.

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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Star Wars

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, let’s get started this morning with this relatively high-interest reading on Star Wars and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Nota bene, please, that this reading is about the original 1977 film. That said, there is a lot of room here to expand this material: conceptually, for example, there is an opening for students to explore the business of Hollywood productions by looking at franchise films, as well as the merchandise they create and market.

Furthermore, the Star Wars series can be used as a way of exploring Manichean allegories in books, art, and film. If the Star Wars films aren’t fundamentally about the conflict between good and evil, then I apparently missed the point of the exhausting number of them I watched.

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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A Lesson Plan on the Possessive Case of Nouns

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Last but not least this morning, here is a lesson plan on the possessive case of nouns. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the grim reaper, a subject which rarely fails to elicit student interest right at the beginning of a class period. Here is a learning support on this area of grammar and punctuation. This scaffolded worksheet is the centerpiece of this lesson; finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the 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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Independent Practice: Shinto

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is an independent practice worksheet on Shinto. Incidentally, if you are a fan of Marie Kondo, you may find in this worksheet the basis of her approach to simplifying life by exercising some discipline over the accumulation of possessions. I actually read her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, which I found helpful. I recognized immediately its underlying Shinto principles; so I wasn’t terrible surprised when Ms. Kondo mentioned her time as a Shinto shrine maiden.

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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A Lesson Plan on Hesiod’s Ages of History from The Order of Things

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a lesson plan on Hesiod’s Ages of History along with its reading and comprehension questions. As I’ve mentioned previously when posting these materials, this lesson (and at least 30 others like it) are something I started working on just before the COVID19 pandemic scaled up and closed schools, and I lost my job as a public school teacher.

To reiterate (and you can read more about these on the “About Posts & Texts” page linked to just above the banner photograph on the homepage of this site), these documents aim to give students an opportunity to work with, and develop their own understanding of, moving between two sets of symbols, words and numbers, in one lesson. The worksheet can be contracted or expanded as is appropriate for the attention spans of the students with whom you’re working. These are, as you will infer, literacy development exercises.

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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Word Root Exercise: Ped/o

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Yesterday, I posted a worksheet on the Latin roots ped, pedi, and -pede; if you scroll down–it’s 12 posts below this one–you’ll find it. As that post relays, in Latin these roots mean foot and feet.

Now here’s a worksheet on the Greek word root ped-o. In Greek this root means, simply, child. As with its Latin counterpart, this is a very productive root in English, forming the basis of words like pediatrics and pedagogue.

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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Democracy (n)

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Again, if this context clues worksheet on the noun democracy isn’t timely, particularly in light of the president’s latest craziness, than I guess I don’t, after all, understand the use of timely as an adjective. For the record, I learned, after consulting my dictionary, that timely means, in one sense “appropriate or adapted to the times or occasion.”

So yeah, I stand by this document as timely at this moment in history.

And as long I as I am presuming to write things into the record, please remember that United States presidents do not have absolute power–in fact, no one in the government does. That’s why we have a separation of powers in our Constitution. At the risk of belaboring the point, let’s not forget that the founders of this country fought a revolutionary war against a British sovereign who liked to think of himself as possessing absolute power.

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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