Tag Archives: context clues

Combatant (n)

Because it comes up consistently in social studies classes, I wrote this context clues worksheet on the noun combatant to help students master the meaning and use of this commonly used noun. This is a particularly good–and necessary–word for kids in social studies classes to know.

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.

Coherent (adj)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective coherent, which I think comes as close to inarguable as it gets when considering words students should know by the time they graduate high school: students really must know this word.

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.

Circumspect (adj)

After another day of edifying young minds (I hope), here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective circumspect. I guess it’s not a particularly commonly used word, but maybe it should be.

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.

Chaos (n)

OK, I’m on my way out the door–but here’s a context clues worksheet on the noun chaos; I’ll assume I don’t need to belabor a rationale for students knowing this word.

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.

Causality (n)

OK, very quickly and after a busy day at a new job, here is a context clues worksheet on the noun causality.

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, January 24, 2019: A Trove of Documents for Teaching Lord of the Flies

On January 6, I published 56 documents for teaching Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece Things Fall Apart.  In last week’s Text, I published a similar set of documents for teaching Elie Wiesel’s Night.

This week’s Text is a batch of documents for teaching William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. I wrote these materials, but never marshalled them into a coherent unit plan, over a two-year period beginning a little over 12 years ago; after that, I never used them again, so it has been about ten years since I laid eyes on this stuff. In any case, let’s get these documents uploaded into this post.

Because I was working in global studies and United States history classrooms at the the same time that I was co-teaching the English class dealing with this novel, I perceived instantly that Golding’s novel was Thomas Hobbes’s “state of nature” nightmare, where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” For that reason, I asked the English teacher with whom I was teaching to make an explicit connection between Hobbes and Lord of the Flies. To that end, here is a reading on Hobbes and its (extended, you’ll notice, if you’ve previously picked up these things from Mark’s Text Terminal) accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I also wrote, to follow up on students’ understanding of the Hobbesian dystopia depicted in Lord of the Flies, this independent practice worksheet that I suspect I would have assigned at about the middle of the novel. The reading and worksheet above began the unit, I’m quite sure.

Next, here are 12 context clues worksheets–one for each chapter. I’m not sure why I compiled this complete vocabulary list for the novel, let alone kept it around. Perhaps I intended them as a learning support? I just don’t remember. I have learned the hard way not to throw away work, no matter how pointless or useless it appears at second glance, so that explains that document’s presence here.

These 12 comprehension worksheets drive a basic understanding of Lord of the Flies and its allegory.

Finally, here are three quizzes on the novel. You will note that these are numbered 2, 3, and 4. If there was ever a number 1, it is lost to time. Also, these aren’t exactly some of my best work, and may well reflect my contempt for my co-teacher’s (and the administrator under whom we served) insistence on quizzes as an assessment tool. I vastly prefer expository writing–i.e. papers–as a means of assessing understanding.

And that’s it. Every document in this post is in Microsoft Word, so these are documents you can manipulate for your own–and your students’–needs.

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.

Capitulate (vi)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb capitulate, which is used intransitively. It’s a common enough word, and certainly a common enough concept, that students probably ought to know 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.

A Short Lesson on the Neolithic Period

OK, here is a lesson plan on the Neolithic Period of human history. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on carbon which serves to familiarize students with that element in preparation for a lesson on carbon dating organic material to establish its age. If this lesson goes into a second day, you might want this context clues worksheet on the noun mayhem. Finally, here is the short reading and comprehension worksheet at the center 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.

Candidate (n)

It’s that time of the political season again–the first voting in the 2020 presidential election will occur in less than two weeks. This is as good a time as any, then, to post this context clues worksheet on the noun candidate.

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.

Boilerplate (n)

Given the current state of journalism (with few exceptions, in fairness), this context clues worksheet on the noun boilerplate seems especially timely. I think it is a word students ought to know by the time they graduate 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.