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.

The Clash

A couple of hundred years ago, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, The Clash liked to call themselves “the only band that matters“: indeed, it was emblazoned across the front of their towering record “London Calling.” Last week while on spring break, I listened to a podcast series on The Clash, hosted by Chuck D of pioneering Hip-Hop group Public Enemy (an inspired choice, by the way) on the streaming music service to which I subscribe. It brought back great memories of a very different time in this world of ours.

Here is a reading on The Clash and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. When I’ve given this to alienated students to read, it has aroused, almost to a one, their interest. Whatever you think of punk rock and The Clash, there is no doubt that their music carries a message of rebellion and its concomitant, hope and action to create a better, more just world.

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: Cracy and Crat

Here is a worksheet on the Greek roots cracy and crat. Unsurprisingly, they mean government, rule, and power–you know, like democracy, physiocrat, and kakistocracy.

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.

Yahoo (n)

Unless you’re teaching Jonathan Swift (to wit, Gulliver’s Travels), or think that you might be able to persuade students to use the word as a softer, more benign insult than students typically use with one another, I suspect this context clues worksheet on the noun yahoo won’t be of much use to you. But there it is if you need or want 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 Sun and Nuclear Fusion

A few minutes remain to me before I must leave for work, so I’ll use them to post this just-typed reading on the sun and nuclear fusion and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that attends it.

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: Dante

Here, on a busy Wednesday morning, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Dante (Alighieri) if you can find a place for it, say, in a unit on the Italian Renaissance.

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.

Trajectory (n)

Finally, on this rainy Tuesday morning, here is a context clues worksheet on the noun trajectory. I suppose there is not much to say about this word other than it might pay to be aware both its denotative meaning, “the curve that a body (as a planet or comet in its orbit or a rocket) describes in space,” and its more connotative meaning, to wit “a path, progression, or line of development resembling a physical trajectory” as in “an upward career trajectory.”

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.

Developmental Delay

In response to student demand, I’ve been producing a lot of new reading and comprehension worksheets on health-related topics. In the course of this work, I typed up this reading on developmental delay and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I haven’t had any specific requests for the topic. However, once I write one of these, a student, to my persistent surprise, will ask to read the text and complete the worksheet. Indeed, it never ceases to amaze me that kids will take an interest in the very last thing I expect them to.

In any case, this is also a potential topic for a professional development roundtable of some sort, so I tagged it accordingly.

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.

Independent Practice: Carolingian Empire

As I’ve said before here, I think Charlemagne is an important historical figure who offers a variety of approaches to the essential question “What is Europe (and How Did it Get That Way)?” or something in that line of inquiry. In the last couple of freshman global studies cycles I co-taught in New York, he had just about disappeared from the curriculum.

If you happen to teach him and the events which he caused, and in which he participated, this independent practice worksheet on the Carolingian Empire might be an effective arrow in your quiver.

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 Worksheet and Learning Support on Forming the Plurals of Nouns

This combination worksheet and learning support on forming the plurals of nouns is something I’ve very nearly dumped several times. Instead, I reformatted it and cleaned up various design errors. I think it could very easily be converted into a simple learning support by supplying students with the declined plurals.

In fact, there are a number of ways this document could be rearranged for classroom use. I’m confident readers of this blog will figure them out.

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 Lesson Plan on Agriculture as a Cause of History

Over the four years this blog has existed, one of the most heavily retrieved items posted here has been these context clues worksheets for the words agriculture and agrarian. Agriculture is a big concept with a lot of porous surfaces that make it easy to transfer across domains of knowledge. In any case, to understand how our species arrived at its present level of development, understanding agriculture remains essential.

So, here is a lesson plan on agriculture as a cause of history. Because students have already, in previous lessons, encountered the noun agriculture (see the context clues worksheets above), I start this lesson right after a class change with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on hunting and gathering societies. It happens that this document is really the mainstay of this lesson, because this worksheet on agriculture as a cause of history is really more in the way of what administrators and teachers now call an “exit ticket.”

If that is insufficient for you needs, here is a body of text on agriculture and the agricultural revolution to use to create a longer worksheet, an independent practice worksheet, or whatever is best for your students’ needs in developing their own understanding of agriculture and its role in history.

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.