Finally, this morning, here is a worksheet on the verb plan as followed by an infinitive. I plan to continue posting these documents until they are all gone.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the linguistic concept of spoonerism. This is half-page worksheet with a three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. I can’t remember now why I prepared this; I suspect it will have relatively low utility in most classrooms, but who knows? I cannot in good faith argue that high school students, my own purview, need to understand what a spoonerism is, let alone know or care about William Archibald Spooner.
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.
This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Latin word root port. This is a very productive root in English and the Romance languages, and for the latter there is a list of cognates at the top of the worksheet to illustrate port’s movement across languages. Port means “to carry” and forms the basis of many high-frequency English words like import, export, deport, portable, and report, all of which appear on this worksheet, as well as transport, which does not–but which you can add to the document should you so choose, as this worksheet is formatted Microsoft Word and open to your editing.
I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the verb convey. For the purposes of this context clues exercise, convey means “to bear from one place to another,” “to transfer or deliver (as property) to another, ” and “to cause to pass from one place or person to another.” I hope it’s obvious that this do-now is meant to hint at the meaning of port. Finally, here is the scaffolded worksheet that is the principal 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.
OK, finally this morning, here is a worksheet on the verb pay when used with an infinitive. It doesn’t pay to write daft curricular materials.
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.
Here is a worksheet on animism that I threw together for the sociology class I taught last year. I think I settled on this as a topic because I know, from experience, that it has tended to come up in global studies instruction the classrooms in which I have served–and it is a concept worth understanding.
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.
This week’s Text is a series of four documents on DNA. You’ll find all four of them–they’ll download to your computer–if you click on that hyperlink. I’ve also posted each individually below. These require a brief explanation.
I’d long understood that I needed something like a basic introduction to DNA. The entry in The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy seemed like the place to start, but then things got complicated. The head worksheet, so to speak, is on DNA. However, like many of the entries in The Dictionary I’ve encountered as I’ve begun producing more worksheets from it, the DNA article contained a number of “see this or that” elements inside parentheses. I understood that without accompanying articles on these scientific concepts, to wit genetic code, nucleotides, and mitosis, the original article on DNA would only be so useful.
So here, in the order in which they appear in the aggregated document in the first paragraph, are the four worksheets, each based on a reading from The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. I think I should point out here that I am not a science teacher, and my brief experiences co-teaching science classes did little to improve my ability to teach science. Because of my own education, I understand science more philosophically as a mode of inquiry, and tend to understand the epistemology of the domain rather than actual scientific practice. I have tended to use science teaching as means of building literacy–hence reading comprehension exercises like these. Anyway, let’s get these document up and out.
First, of course, is this worksheet on DNA, which began this whole procedure. This is a two-page document with a reading of eight sentences (three of which contain parenthetical elements in their respective terminations, and which the following documents seek to address) and ten comprehension questions.
Second is this worksheet on the genetic code. At the end of the first sentence in the DNA reading above, the reader receives instructions, in parentheses, to “see genetic code.” This document deals with that exhortation. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences–and these are all longish compounds which may require modification for some readers–and four comprehension questions.
The third document in the series is this worksheet on nucleotides. This document deals with the imperative, in parentheses at the end of the second sentence in the DNA document, to “see nucleotides.” This is a full-page document with a five-sentence reading and five comprehension questions.
Fourth, and finally, is this worksheet on mitosis, which answers the call, in parentheses at the end of the sixth sentence, to “see mitosis.” This document is a full page, with a reading of four sentences and five comprehension questions. I should probably mention here that the reading for this worksheet contains two parenthetical references: at the end of the third sentence, the reader is encouraged to “see genetics“; and at the end of the fourth sentence, there is another encouragement to “see meiosis.” I have assumed that if a teacher is using these documents, students already have a relatively firm grasp of the concept of genetics. As of meiosis, if a science teacher will step forth and ask me to produce a worksheet on that concept, I’ll do so and amend this post.
Addendum: After reviewing the four documents posted above, I decided to develop two more Cultural Literacy worksheets–one on meiosis and another on sex chromosomes in order to deal with all the cross references on the preceding four. In the final analysis, I haven’t much of an idea about the usefulness of all of this. What I can tell you is that these are six documents formatted in Microsoft Word (like most things on Mark’s Text Terminal, and if you are a regular visitor here, I’ll bet you’re tired of hearing me say that), so you can combine, copy, paste, revise, edit, and adapt as you see fit.
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.
Here is a worksheet on the verb offer as it is used with an infinitive. Mark’s Text Terminal hereby offers to cease publishing curricular materials of questionable value and utility.
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.
Here is a worksheet on the use of the verbs lay and lie. These are two commonly misused words, and Paul Brians, in his excellent book Common Errors in English Usage (which he generously makes available at no charge on his page at the Washington State University website) sorts them out in the seven-sentence reading that drives this worksheet. There are also ten modified cloze exercises for students to try their hands at using these two verbs properly.
Simply put, lay is transitive and requires a direct object: One lays one’s keys on the counter when one returns home from work. Lie is intransitive and does not require a direct object: One lies down to take a nap.
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.
This week’s Text is a quartet of context clues worksheets on words that represent important concepts to me–the idea of doing something conscientiously and well. For starters, here is the worksheet on the noun competence. It means “the quality or state of being competent.” And herein lies the challenge of teaching these words, I think: one must understand the meaning of the adjective competent (see below) to understand the noun competence.
Next up is the antonym to competence with this worksheet on the noun incompetence. This one means “the state or fact of being incompetent.” Once more, we’re stuck with the problem limned above: one must know the adjective incompetent to understand the noun incompetence (which is the problem that drives this relatively prolix and arguably nonsensical blog post). In any case, this worksheet, especially when used with the document above on competence, offers a solid opportunity to teach or reinforce the meaning of the prefix in.
Now let’s move on to the adjective that correspond to these nouns with this worksheet on competent. This worksheet points students toward the most common definitions of this word, to wit, “having requisite or adequate ability or qualities” and “having the capacity to function or develop in a particular way.”
And once again, you’ll find the antonym to competent in this worksheet on the adjective incompetent. It means “inadequate to or unsuitable for a particular purpose,” “lacking the qualities needed for effective action,” and “unable to function properly.” These definitions may require more concrete examples–of which, both fortunately and unfortunately, there are plenty in our public life.
Finally, to aid you in the work on interpreting the words in these documents, here is a lexicon for all four of these words.
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.
This Cultural Literacy worksheet on imperialism is the final documents post for National Native American Heritage Month 2023. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. Once again, like almost everything from The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, this reading’s brevity–it defines imperialism clearly and correctly and explicitly links it with colonialism–is its strength.
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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