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: Roosevelt’s Court Packing Plan

Moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Roosevelt’s court packing plan. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences–all longish compounds separated by commas–and three comprehension questions.

As I look at this document this morning, I find, apropos of its subject matter, I suppose, that the text is packed in a little too tightly. Moreover, the aforementioned three longish compound sentences might be better rewritten if you plan to use this document with emergent or struggling readers or students for whom English is a new language. Moreover, I think the comprehension questions could be improved, or expanded, with a couple of critical thinking questions added.

But what do you think?

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, 5 July 2024: A Lesson Plan on Shakespeare’s Plays in Chronological Order by Date of Publication from The Order of Things

This week’s Text is another lesson, this one on Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order of publication, adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s superlative reference book The Order of Things.

You’ll need this worksheet with a reading (which is a list) and attendant comprehension questions. Nota bene, once again, that this series of lessons from The Order of Things, at least in my design conception, is meant to serve emergent and struggling readers as well as learners of English as a new language. Many, if not most of the lessons adapted from Ms. Kipfer’s book offer students a chance to deal with two symbolic systems–i.e. numbers and words–in a relatively stress-free way.

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 English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Wish

Here is a worksheet on the verb wish when it is used with an infinitive. I wish to produce better materials for teaching writing than this one.

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: Satire

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on satire. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two relatively simple sentences and three comprehension questions. A short but solid introduction to this important cultural concept.

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, 28 June 2024: A Lesson Plan on the Latin Word Root Six

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Latin word rood sex, which means six. This doesn’t produce a lot of high frequency words in English, but like the previous word root lesson that appeared on this blog, it is a root that shows up in words that are otherwise difficult to understand, like sexagenarian, sextuplet, sexennial, and sextet. They’re all included on the scaffolded worksheet, replete with cognates from the Romance languages that grow from Latin roots, that serves as the mainstay of this lesson

As I write this post, I find mysterious my choice, for this lesson, of this do-now exercise 0n the noun intercourse. It means, in the context of the sentence in which I have placed it on this worksheet, “connection or dealings between persons or groups” as well as “exchange, especially of thoughts or feelings.” So, unlike other lessons (but like the lesson on sept), there is no meaningful connection between the do-now and the main work of this lesson.

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 English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Want

Here is a worksheet on the verb want when followed by an infinitive. I want to move all of these worksheets out of my drafts folder.

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: Subsidy

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a subsidy. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one sentence and one comprehension question. Just the basics, but useful, I would think, for any introductory economics course as well as a range of topics in United States history.

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, 21 June 2024: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Chemical Elements

This week’s Text is this reading on chemical elements along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The reading derives from the Intellectual Devotional series of books, whose readings I have found quite useful in classroom practice. Both documents are formatted in Microsoft Word so that you can easily convert them to a format of your choice as well as edit them for specific students or classroom use.

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 English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Seem

OK, finally this morning, here is a worksheet on the verb seem when used with an infinitive. This worksheet seems to be intellectually lightweight.

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: Obscenity

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of obscenity. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences (the last a compound separated by a semicolon) and three comprehension questions. While obscenity as a legal concept doesn’t much appear in the press anymore, mostly because it appears to be a settled legal issue, it certainly was in the news a great deal when I was in high school.

So this may currently be irrelevant material–something I learned about in school because it was current in a way that it no longer is.

But what do you think?

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.