Here’s a context clues worksheet on the transitive verb vanquish I just whipped up for a global studies class.
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.
Several years ago, when I was still subscribing to the Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T & W), I stumbled across the work of a Jamila Lyiscott. She had published her poem Broken English in T & W’s magazine. “Broken English” impressed me as one of the best explanations of code switching that I’d seen–and that I’ve seen since. I understood right away that “Broken English” could and should be used in my classroom.
Because I believe in teaching writing skills, and assisting students in developing their own understanding of cogent expository prose, several years ago I began designing synthetic and experiential lessons and units on the parts of speech, focusing particularly on writing grammatically complete, meaningful sentences. I’ve really only worked in inner-city schools, where my students speak a colorful vernacular informed by the Hip-Hop music they so adore. I knew I had to find a way to justify my pedagogy to them, as well as my belief–influenced to no small extent by the work of Lisa Delpit–that it is important for students to understand how to speak in a variety of registers, including that known quaintly as “the King’s English”, which Ms. Delpit rightly calls a “language of power.”All of this brought me back around to Jamila Lysicott.
So I began work on what has ultimately become this lesson plan on code switching, which is based upon “Broken English.” I’ve been procrastinating posting this as a Weekly Text because the worksheet, at eight pages, strikes me a bit too long for kids with limited literacy and/or attention spans. I thought about breaking it down to something smaller. Ultimately, I’ve decided that I will post this as is with the proviso that this lesson is, practically speaking, probably more like two, three or perhaps even four lessons. Moreover, if you decide to use it as a vocabulary building lesson, I think you could pull more words out of the text and add them to that section of the worksheet. As with all Weekly Texts at Mark’s Text Terminal, these documents are in Microsoft Word, so you may alter them to suit your needs.
So, for this lesson, you will need these four do now worksheets on the words articulate as an adjective (and this might be a suitable opportunity to teach it as a verb as well) diction, prose and verse. This Cultural Literacy worksheet on slang might also be useful as for this lesson. Here is the worksheet for this lesson, and the teachers’ exegesis for “Broken English”. Finally, this typescript of the poem “Broken English” itself might be helpful, especially if you want to break it up for discrete lessons.
And here is a link to a TED Talk in which Jamila Lyiscott reads “Broken English.”
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: tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I am thankful for the day off, and for the short break of which it is a part. Here is a word root worksheet on the Latin word root ver; it means true. As you can see on the worksheet itself, ver is at the root of several key words in the academic lexicon.
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.
Oh–and Happy Thanksgiving!
We hosted parent-teacher conferences last evening, which means we were here until almost eight o’clock. Long day, to put it succinctly if in agrammatical style.
A couple of hundred years ago, when I was studying Russian in college, I fell into confusion when my professor introduced the accusative case; nouns used as direct objects in Russian are inflected differently–there are five oblique cases–i.e. cases other than the nominative in Russian–than they are as subjects. For example, kniga, the word for book, becomes knigu when it is the direct object of a verb, as in “I am reading a book.” My ignorance at that moment felt legion to me (I was in my early thirties as an undergraduate). Discovering that I didn’t understand the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs only exacerbated the extent of my ignorance.
Students in high school really ought to know the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs for a variety of reasons, and studying inflected languages is certainly one of them. For that reason, this week’s Text is two Cultural Literacy worksheets on transitive and intransitive verbs. These are short exercises that I use at the beginning of lessons on recognizing these verbs and understanding how to use them.
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.
You might find this reading on Renaissance bluenose Girolamo Savonarola timely, as well as the reading comprehension worksheet to accompany 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.
Some time ago, I posted the first lesson from my unit on nouns. I believe very strongly in teaching the parts of speech as a pathway to greater literacy in the students I serve, and I have had good luck using these units with them. So, for this week’s Text, I offer the second lesson plan of this unit, on common and proper nouns.
I begin this lesson, right after the second bell rings, with this do now exercise adapted from The Elements of Style. After settling students with that short exercise, I move on to the mainstay of the lesson, which is this structured worksheet on common and proper nouns. Finally, you might find useful the teacher’s copy of the worksheet with the correct answers.
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.
By any standard I recognize, the 2016 presidential election season is hands down the most appalling in my lifetime–and I am not a young man. If it is true (as I believe it is), that the election of Barack Obama, the first President of the United States of African descent, exposed latent racism and bigotry in the United States, then this election has in every respect put the icing on that ugly cake. Moreover, it appears that the specter of a Trump administration has aroused anxiety in children and that in general there is “Trump Anxiety” among adults as well. I don’t much care for either candidate, but it is undeniable that the Republican candidate has engaged in dog-whistling bigotry, sexism and misogyny, general vulgarity, and a combination of grotesque vanity and whining self-pity that really ought to put off anyone with reasonably stable mental health.
So this week, less than two weeks before the general election, seems as good a time as any to post a reading on George Washington’s famous letter on toleration for today’s Weekly Text. Finally, here is a reading comprehension worksheet to accompany 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.
It’s the final Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month, 2016, and so here is the final Weekly Text in observance of this month. I offer this week a a reading on Che Guevara, one of the most instantly recognizable icons of Hispanic–and Latin American–history. To accompany this reading here is a a reading comprehension worksheet. And that’s it for this 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.
Mark’s Text Terminal continues to observe Hispanic Heritage Month. I’ve found in compiling material for posts that I have a paucity of material on subjects appropriate for this month. This week’s Text is a reading on Bartolomeo de las Casas and a reading comprehension worksheet to accompany it. De las Casas, as you may know, was a Dominican friar and bishop (and a contemporary and acquaintance of Christopher Columbus) who protested Spanish imperial policy in the New World, particularly the abuse and eventual genocide of the natives. He set all this down in his classic anti-imperialist tract, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. As I searched its title, I was surprised to find the book available as a PDF from Columbia University. I consider this book one of the most important I read as an undergraduate.
In choosing de las Casas as a subject for a Weekly Text, I was momentarily stymied by my lack of understanding of the difference between the terms Hispanic, Latino, and Spanish. Fortunately, there are a number of clear explanations of this nomenclature out there; I knew this because recently, on Facebook, I came across this excellent comic delineating the difference between Latino and Hispanic. By my understanding of these terms, Bartolomeo de las Casas meets the definition of Hispanic.
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.
Post Scriptum: An old high school friend of mine who knows well whereof she speaks forwarded this article about the use of the term “Latinx” as a signifier for people from the Spanish-speaking world.
Well, the month of September 2016 has passed us by, never to be seen again. I’ve been so busy getting the school year up and running that I barely noticed.
For the past two weeks, and for the next two weeks, Mark’s Text Terminal is featuring readings and reading comprehension worksheets in observance of Hispanic Heritage Month. In the process of preparing these posts, I’ve learned a lot about this celebration. If you teach in a school district that is as diverse as ours here in New York City, you are very likely working with a number of students of Hispanic descent. If so, you and your students might be interested in both the Hispanic Heritage Foundation and its Youth Awards program.
For my part, I offer as this week’s Text a reading on author and Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as well as a comprehension worksheet to accompany it. And now I must get back to work on planning.
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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