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 Weekly Text, June 3, 2016: Five Parsing Sentences Worksheets for Nouns

Posted on June 3, 2016 | Leave a comment

WordPress, whose software drives Mark’s Text Terminal, provides a handy set of tools to help me understand who visits this blog and why. I’ve been particularly interested in the number of users finding their way here from countries outside the United States. If I’m reading the analytical material in my visitors’ log correctly, most people visiting Mark’s Text Terminal from around the world arrive here by using search terms in some variation of “parsing sentences worksheet.”

So, this weeks text is five parsing sentences worksheets for nouns. Over time, I’ll post all of my parsing sentences worksheets; I have five for each part of speech. You may want to take a look at the users manual for parsing sentences worksheets.

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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The Weekly Text, May 20, 2016: Three Context Clues Worksheets on Exegesis (n), Exegete (n), and Exegetical (adj)

Posted on May 20, 2016 | Leave a comment

As the school year wanes, I’m working on The Weekly Texts for the summer months. I plan a lengthy break from computer screens and keyboards. So, I’ll prepare a bunch of posts, then publish them from my smartphone. If you’re a user of this blog who links through from the AFT’s Share My Lesson Plan site, nota bene that I won’t be able to post material there for much of the summer. You may want to point your browser directly to Mark’s Text Terminal; I’ll post a new Text every Friday throughout the summer.

For this week, here are three context clues worksheets on the words exegesis, exegete and exegetical. If you teach English, and particularly novels, poems etc., these are three words your students, arguably, ought to know. In any case, this trio also shows students something about word roots and morphology, and that can be taught actively, or left for students to infer.

Until next week….

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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The Weekly Text, May 13, 2016: A Learning Support and Worksheet on Citing Sources in Research Papers

Posted on May 13, 2016 | Leave a comment

It’s Friday the 13th! I hope nothing bad happens to you today.

Although I teach struggling students, I hold them to high standards. One way I can do that–and that is the purpose of this website, incidentally–is to adapt the curriculum in a way that has them doing the same work, though not at the same pace or in the same manner, as their peers working in the general education curriculum. I’m particularly interested in helping students learn to write synthetic research papers, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in these pages. Needless to say, students struggling with literacy, executive skills, issues with focus and attention, impulse control, or general apathy need support, and plenty of it, to navigate a project of the scope of most research papers.

Here is a a worksheet that assists students in determining when to cite sources in a synthetic research paper; this is the same text as the worksheet, but rearranged and annotated as a learning support.

As always, I hope you find this material useful, and I’d be grateful to hear how you’ve used it and/or adapted it. Until next week….

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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The Weekly Text, April 15, 2016: Five Worksheets on the Homophones Son and Sun

Posted on April 15, 2016 | Leave a comment

Occasionally I get carried away developing certain kinds of instructional materials. Last fall, when I developed a large number of homophone worksheets while I was away from work for an extended civic responsibility, was no exception. I completed work on a large batch of these short exercises during that time, most of which were and are thought-provoking vocabulary builders and clarifiers.

However, the five worksheets for clarifying the use of the homophones son and sun don’t really fit that bill for the high schoolers I teach. This pair is too simple even for the struggling readers I teach. In fact, these worksheets impelled me to apologize to my students for insulting their intelligence. If you work in the elementary grades, or teach English language learners, these might be appropriate for your classroom. If you haven’t used these before, you’ll find the Homophone Worksheet Users’s Manual useful.

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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The Weekly Text, April 8, 2016: Four Word Root Worksheets on the Latin Roots for Three, Four, Five, and Six

Posted on April 8, 2016 | Leave a comment

If you’re a math teacher working with struggling learners, you might find these four Latin word root worksheets for the numbers three, four, five, and six useful. Or, if you just want to build vocabulary quickly, I think these will serve your purpose. If these are the first word root worksheets from Mark’s Text Terminal you’ve used, the Word Root Worksheets Users’ Manual will help you with a suggested method for their 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.

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The Weekly Text, April 1, 2016: A Lesson Plan on Alain Resnais’ Holocaust Documentary “Night and Fog”

Posted on April 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

Some years ago, I began working to build a unit that guided struggling learners through the process of writing a synthetic research paper. I knew it would have to be highly structured into a scaffold form, and would need to guide students through the process of postulating an argument, researching and reading, evaluating evidence, outlining, and citing sources in Modern Language Association style. Since our sophomore research paper topic at the time was the Holocaust, I designed my highly structured research paper unit around that dismal period of European history.

I’ve actually floated a book proposal to a small educational publisher for this unit; they passed, which persuaded me the unit requires more work before it’s publishable. Since then,  I’ve worked on refining this sprawling unit.

Do you know Alain Renais’ documentary on the Holocaust, Night and Fog? I first saw it as a student at Ray F. Sennett Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, and it shocked me; indeed, it was one of those educational “before and after” (like reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X or Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown) moments for me. Early on in planning this unit, I knew this film–which packs an amazing amount of information (and a number of shocking images) into its 32 minute running time–would serve as the opening lesson.

Here then is a complete lesson to attend a viewing of Night and Fog.

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, Lesson Plans, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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The Weekly Text, July 22, 2016: Three Context Clues Stemming from the Verb Perceive

Posted on March 31, 2016 | Leave a comment

A couple of weeks in Vermont always does me a world of good. This weeks Text is three context clues worksheets stemming from the verb perceive. If you haven’t previously used context clues worksheets from Mark’s Text Terminal, you might find the users’ manual for context clues worksheets helpful for working with them in your classroom.

It’s summer! This is the payoff for teachers, and I am collecting every minute I can.

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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The Weekly Text, July 1, 2016: A Trove of Documents for a Professional Development Inquiry into Executive Skills

Posted on March 31, 2016 | Leave a comment

Are you done with the 2015-2016 school year? I gather that our school year here in New York City goes much later than other districts in the United States. Our last day was Tuesday the 28th.

So it’s summer break! I always schedule my share of fun for these months, but I also work some–because I want to. You can continue to look for the Weekly Text at Mark’s Text Terminal, because I only plan to miss three Fridays during the summer.

Over the years, as an employee of the New York City Department of Education, I’ve experienced a mixed bag of professional development sessions. A few years ago, at least in the school in which I presently serve, teachers were responsible for performing professional inquiry groups, which selected its own topic for, well, inquiry, and analysis, germane to the work we do, but obviously for improving pedagogy. For this week, then, here are–in three separate links–the raw materials for a professional development presentation on executive skills and function I wrote for the group I joined in the 2011-2012 school year.

First up are the the proposal for this inquiry group, and a learning support for teachers, which are the teacher’s materials for this presentation; second, here are four student surveys to assess executive skills; third, and finally, here is a letter explaining these surveys to students. I adapted the student surveys from Ellen Galinsky’s excellent book Mind in the Making.

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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The Weekly Text, March 24, 2016: A Learning Support on the Use of Comparative and Superlative Adjectives

Posted on March 24, 2016 | Leave a comment

We’re off for Good Friday tomorrow, so I’m posting this week’s text this (Thursday) morning, so that I can spend the day doing something else besides looking at my computer screen–maybe looking at blue skies and budding trees.

So–very quickly–here is learning support on the formation of comparative and superlative adjectives that I use with a couple of lessons from my adjectives unit. As always, if you find it useful, I’d like to hear your comments.

And Happy Passover, Happy Easter, and Happy Spring!

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, March 18, 2016: Three Context Clues Worksheets on Fanatic (n), Fanaticism (n), and Fanatical (adj)

Posted on March 18, 2016 | Leave a comment

Here are three context clues worksheets for the words fanatic, fanaticism, and fanatical. I thought these words appropriate in this gruesome political campaign season. If you haven’t dealt with these worksheets before, you may want to consult the Focus on One Word Worksheets Users’ Manual that will help explain why these read and look the way they do.

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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