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.

Tier (n)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun tier, which is a word students should know by the time they leave high school. This is a very common noun in educated discourse, in which I want the students I serve to participate. It means, on this worksheet, layer. This word, to my mild surprise, also has use as a verb.

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: Vested Interest

Alright, I think this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a vested interest would complement the reading, one post below this one, on the military-industrial complex I just published.

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.

Military-Industrial Complex

Some years ago, I watched a documentary called “Why We Fight” (whose title alludes to a series of documentary films, also called “Why We Fight,” most of them directed by Frank Capra, which sought to justify the United States involvement in World War II) that reported, among other things, that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in one of the original drafts of his famous farewell speech to the nation, referred not just to a nascent “military-industrial complex” but to a “military-industrial-congressional complex.” The danger of the weapons industry’s interest, for the sake of profit, in global conflict ought to be obvious enough, as should its influence. These are some the biggest, most well-capitalized corporations in this nation.

But when Ike, who wasn’t exactly a conspiracy-minded hippie, said it, it had real gravitas. Too bad we as a nation appear not to have heeded his warning about this phenomenon.

Anyway, maybe this reading on the military-industrial complex and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet might have some utility in your classroom.

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.

Floe (n) and Flow (vi/vt)

OK, it’s first thing on a Monday morning, and here are five homophone worksheets on the noun floe and the verb flow. Flow is used, incidentally, both intransitively and transively.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Aqua

I don’t imagine I need to go on and on about this worksheet on the Latin word root aqua. It means, of course, water. It’s hard to imagine a situation in which students wouldn’t need a thoroughgoing knowledge of this root and the words in English that grow from 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.

Supply (n) and Supply (vi/vt)

Here are a pair of context clues worksheets on supply as both a noun and a verb. As a verb, it is used both transitively and intransitively.

I worked in an economics-themed high school for ten years, so you’ll understand the word in two parts of speech.

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.

Five Points

Have you seen Martin Scorsese’s film Gangs of New York? Or perhaps read Herbert Asbury’s book, The Gangs of New York, from which most of the historical material in the film is drawn? You might also have come across Tyler Anbinder’s book–highly recommended, if the subject interests you–on the infamous Lower Manhattan neighborhood which is now subsumed by Chinatown. I became interested in the district after seeing Mr. Scorsese’s film, and spent some time reading, thinking about, and visiting it.

For my esteemed colleagues teaching in New York City, I can assure you from direct experience with my own students in The Bronx and Manhattan that this reading on the Five Points is generally of high interest to kids in the Five Boroughs. Here is the reading’s accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension 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.

A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Extortion”

The kids with whom I have used them have loved them, so I developed a large body of materials from the Lawrence Treat’s excellent series Crime and Puzzlementwhich appears to be available, perhaps with dubious legality, all over the Internet as free PDF downloads.

Here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Extortion.” I generally begin this lesson, in order to settle students after a class change, with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Ships That Pass in the Night.” You will, of course, need the illustration of the crime scene and its accompanying questions from the book to investigate the crime. Finally, this typescript of the answer key will help you and your students, using the evidence, to definitively solve the crime.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Meso

While the words that spring from it are mostly technical in nature, here, nonetheless, if you can use it, is a worksheet on the Greek word root meso; it will most likely show up in the noun Mesoamerica or the adjective Mesoamerican in most classrooms. In any case, it means middle.

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.

Affiliate (vi/vt)

On a morning of soft sunlight and warm temperatures in Western Massachusetts, here is a context clues worksheet on the verb affiliate. It has both intransitive and transitive uses.

And this worksheet, like just about everything on Mark’s Text Terminal, is in Microsoft Word. That means you can convert it to a worksheet on affiliate as a noun, should you see fit.

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.