Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

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, 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, 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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The Weekly Text, March 11, 2016: A Learning Support on Latinisms and Latin Abbreviations

Posted on March 11, 2016 | Leave a comment

Phew, busy week. I’ll keep this short so I can sustain some stamina to get through this afternoon’s round (after being here last evening until almost eight for same) of parent-teacher conferences.

So, here is a learning support for Latinisms and Latin abbreviations that commonly appear in English expository prose. These terms often trip up students, and in any case, I believe strongly that we ought to be teaching, as part of a broader curriculum for teaching writing, the more common of these, like e.g. and i.e., if not viz. and Q.E.D.

But what do you think? Should we bother with this at all? I welcome (i.e. seek, beg for, pursue, wheedle after, crave) your comments.

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 4, 2016: Two Worksheets on the Latin Word Roots Mat, Matri, Mater, and Patr, Patri, Pater

Posted on March 4, 2016 | Leave a comment

Next week is another round of parent-teacher conferences, so I am busily preparing for them–amid the usual work adjusting readings for students, developing new materials for them, etc. I’ll keep this week’s text short and basic, and spare you the exposition.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a word root worksheet, so here are two: the first one is Latin word roots mat, matri, and mater which I am confident you know means mother; the second one is for the Latin word roots patr, patri and pater, which means not just father, but also fatherland. If you’re not familiar already with these worksheets, which I use for vocabulary building with the struggling readers I serve, than you might need to consult the Word Root Worksheets Users’ Manual.

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, January 29, 2016: Two Learning Supports on Transition Words

Posted on January 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

Yesterday was the final day of New York State’s biannual exercise in standardized testing, the Regents Examinations.  I’ve had time to revise a structured research paper unit on the Holocaust I developed a few years ago to introduce struggling students to methods for undertaking such a project. I found two learning supports for using transition words in expository prose amid this unit (I hadn’t looked at it in a couple of years), which are distinct only in their layout.

The second one, in outline form, might well be useful in a lesson or short unit on outlining. I’m pondering how I might work with it that way. If you see something effective in it for work on outlining, perhaps this structured outlining blank will be of some value to you.

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, January 22, 2016: Two Context Clues Worksheets on the Adjective Empirical and the Noun Empiricism

Posted on January 22, 2016 | Leave a comment

Here, as I mentioned last week, are two context clues worksheets on the words empirical and empiricism. These sat on my work table for months before I finally summoned the will to use them a couple of weeks ago in two of my classes. I avoided them because I’d erroneously assumed that these words, or the concepts they represent, were simply too abstract for the struggling and often disengaged learners I serve.

Once I started leading the students through them, however,  I realized we were in one of those  serendipitous “teachable moments.” To our surprise. a series of Socratic exchanges quickly yielded–on both worksheets, which we completed, interestingly, on two non-successive days–definitions that were within two or three words of those in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (which, incidentally, is the dictionary I use to guide me when I write sentences for these kinds of context clues worksheets). We all, I think, found this gratifying.

Immediately after these classes, when I’d realized what had happened, I grabbed my notebook and wrote down the sequence of questions I asked to guide students through these two exercises. I shaped them into typescript; I’ve included them at the bottom of the two worksheets linked to above.

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, January 15, 2016: Two Glossaries on the Parts of Speech

Posted on January 15, 2016 | Leave a comment

It has been a hectic week, characteristic of January in this school, which is always a concatenation of testing and extracurricular activities. For this week’s text, I offer up a couple of learning supports. The first is a basic glossary of the parts of the speech. This version of this support contains simple descriptions of each of the parts of speech with a few spare examples of their use. The second is a supported glossary of the parts of speech which includes a fuller description of each part of speech, along with some sentences that demonstrate their use.

If you use these, as always, I’d very much like to hear how; moreover, I’d like to hear from you if you have any suggestions about how I might further develop or improve these learning supports–or how you have done so.

Earlier this week, I had a very interesting experience teaching the words empirical and empiricism, by way of context clues worksheets, to some of the struggling readers and learners whom I serve. In both of the classes in which I used these worksheets, students, secondary to my Socratic questioning, were able to infer the meanings of both of these highly abstract words. Next week or the week after, as time permits, I plan to post these worksheets with a blog post on the line of questioning I used to elicit the meanings 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.

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The Weekly Text, January 8, 2016: A Lesson Plan on Teaching the Ordinal Centuries

Posted on January 8, 2016 | Leave a comment

Over the years, I have seen students suffer persistent confusion over the difference between the cardinal (counting numbers) and ordinal (numbers that place things in rank or order) numbers historians, and therefore social studies teachers, use to name and number centuries. It goes without saying, I assume, that a lack of understanding of this basic means of understanding historical time leads to confusion about the scope, sequence and, indeed, sweep of history. Understanding this discourse is by any standard, I should think, necessary for any basic understanding of what is going on in a social studies classroom.

Yet, I have not seen this way of understanding historical time taught explicitly in my thirteen years as a social studies/English/special education teacher.

So, fresh from Mark’s Text Terminal for the New Year, here is a complete lesson plan on teaching the ordinal centuries. Under this link you’ll find a lesson plan, two context clues for the noun phrase cardinal number and the adjective ordinal (and you may want to take a look at the Focus on One Word Worksheets Users’ Manual to work with those), and a scaffolded worksheet.

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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