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: Green Revolution

Now seems like a good time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the green revolution. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two longish sentences and three comprehension questions.

For the record, this document deals with the increase in the 1960s and 1970s in the production of cereals like wheat and rice due to advances in the productivity in seeds and innovations in agricultural technology, and not any kind of political revolution.

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.

Word Root Exercise: Centr/o, Centri

Here is a worksheet on the Greek word roots centr-o and centri. They mean, fairly obviously, center. Also obvious from the beginning is that this is a very productive root in English, showing up at the base of a number of high-frequency words in both the vernacular and scholarly language.

To name just three that show up in the high school curriculum, we have (on this worksheet) ethnocentric, eccentric, and anthropocentric.

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.

Stun (vt)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb stun. It’s used only transitively, so don’t forget you direct object: the subject of the sentence must stun someone or something.

The verb means, variously, “to make senseless, groggy, or dizzy by or as if by a blow,” “daze,”  “to shock with noise,” and “to overcome especially with paralyzing astonishment or disbelief.” In other words, this is a nice solid verb with a wide but coherent range of meanings that students, by the time they graduate high school, I submit, should know and be able to use proficiently.

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, 3 September 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Cookie Jar”

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Cookie Jar.” I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the French noun phrase coup de grace. This is a half-page worksheet with a three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. Let me caution you that its not the cheeriest of material: remember that the original meaning of coup de grace is “a death blow or death shot administered to end the suffering of one mortally wounded.” If you want a better do-now for this lesson, there are thousands of them on this blog–just go to the word cloud on the home page and click on “context clues” or “cultural literacy.”

To conduct your investigation into the heinous crime committed in this lesson, you’ll need this PDF scan of the illustration and questions that serve, respectively, and the evidence and investigative points for solving the case. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key to help you bring the offender to justice.

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: Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on gross domestic product (GDP). This is a half-page worksheet with three sentences and three comprehension questions. In spite of its brevity–or perhaps because of it, because the basic concept of GDP is simple–this is a good basic explanation of this broad measure of economic activity in a nation state, state, or province.

I would think this would be useful in just about any social studies class, but especially in the second half of high school.

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.

Common Errors in English Usage: Goal (n), Objective (n)

Once again, from Paul Brians’ book Common Errors in English Usage (to which he allows access at no charge at the Washington State University website), here is a worksheet on using and differentiating the nouns goal and objective. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of two brief paragraphs and ten modified cloze exercises.

And, once again, Professor Brians supplies a clear and concise exposition of the use of these words–and makes room for a broader discussion about English usage and clear communication.

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.

Stipulate (vi/vt), Stipulation (n)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb stipulate and another on the noun stipulation. This has always seemed to me a word students should know before they leave high school. If nothing else, it gives teachers the opportunity to say to students, “If anyone is looking down the road at law school, here are a couple of words useful to know.

For the record, stipulate is used both intransitively and transitively. Intransitively, it means “to make an agreement or covenant to do or forbear something,” “contract,” and “to demand an express term in an agreement — used with for.” Transitively, it means “to specify as a condition or requirement (as of an agreement or offer)” and “to give a guarantee of.” The noun stipulation means “an act of stipulating” and “something stipulated; especially a condition, requirement, or item specified in a legal instrument.”

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.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Not that demand for it is likely to be great, but here, nonetheless, is a reading on Friedrich Nietzsche along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

I wrote this material for a student I worked with at the very beginning of my teaching career. After he used it, I don’t believe I ever printed another copy of it. I have some history with Nietzsche, so I can tell you that this is a workmanlike, mostly superficial account of his philosophy. But how, really, to deal with a thinker of Nietzsche’s range, depth, and insight in one page? Impossible, I say.

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: Extra-, Extro

Here is a worksheet on the Latin word roots extra and extro. They mean outside and beyond. This two roots are at the base of a lot of high-frequency words in English, including two adjectives commonly used in your own school–extracurricular and extramural.

Or how about the strong expository verb extrapolate? Surely something we want students to be able to do. Then of course there is always the old standby, extraordinary, literally “beyond ordinary.” Enough said.

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: The Great Gatsby

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on The Great Gatsby. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. In other words, the sparest of introduction what many people regard as the Great American Novel.

If you’re looking for something a bit longer on Gatsby, you’ll find it here. Likewise, if you need a reading on F. Scott Fitzgerald himself, you’ll find one here.

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.