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.
Last week I posted a complete lesson plan on mercantilism, which you’ll find three posts below this one. This week’s Text is a lesson plan on laissez-faire capitalism , which is the free-market orthodoxy that arose, mostly due to Adam Smith, to challenge mercantilist trade policy.
As I mentioned in last week’s companion post, it often takes students in my classes up to three days to complete an assignment of this length. To that end, here are three context clues worksheets on merchant, merchandise, and mercantile. These are meant to reinforce the lesson on mercantilism by providing context for the examination of laissez-faire; they also provide teachers and opportunity to familiarize students with the relatively productive Latin word root merc. In addition to forming the basis for the three words in these context clues worksheets, merc (it means “trade”) is found in words like mercenary and commerce.
This lesson, like almost everything I develop, aims to promote literacy. particularly reading comprehension. Here is the intellectual devotional reading on laissez-faire that is the mainstay of this lesson. Finally, you’ll need this reading comprehension worksheet on laissez-faire.
School is started, and I’m already much busier than I want or need to be. I hope your year is off to a good start.
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 in New York City we return to school on Tuesday, September 6th, so this is the final weekend of the summer break. It went fast, as it always does. I’ll now return to post The Weekly Text every Friday morning. To begin the year, here is a a lesson plan on mercantilism. In my school, mercantilism is a topic that repeats in a variety of courses and is therefore an essential concept for understanding trade policy and legislation, causes of conflict, and one of the motives for the American Revolution, among other things. Unlike other complete lesson plans I’ve posted thus far on Mark’s Text Terminal, this one is a stand-alone, special topic lesson, i.e. not part of a larger unit plan. Therefore, you’ll find it aligned to four Common Core Standards in the lesson plan document itself.
A reading of this length and the reading comprehension worksheet that accompanies it, depending on where we are in the school year, can take up to three days to complete in my classroom–which I use to assess students’ capacity to retain and apply information over the short term. For that reason, I include with this lesson three context clues worksheets on commodity, barrier, and tariff. These are the short, do-now worksheets I use to ease transitions between periods at the beginning of class to help students settle themselves (not to mention assisting them in developing their own understanding of inferring meanings of words from context, and building abstract academic vocabularies). Obviously, these are three key vocabulary words related to mercantilism; the latter two, barrier and tariff, are the two leading instruments of trade policy in mercantilist systems, and therefore essential to an understanding of them.
Finally, for the mainstay of the lesson, here are an Intellectual Devotional reading on mercantilism and a reading comprehension worksheet to accompany the reading on mercantilism. These are self-explanatory, so I’ll resist the temptation to gas on about them. If you seek guidance in using any of these materials, you might want to check out some of the users’ manuals in the About Weekly Texts link (that one is live, too) on the homepage of Mark’s Text Terminal, just above the banner photograph.
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 are two context clues worksheets on the verb secede and the noun secession. I hope you find them 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.
Here, to make some effort toward rounding out my assortment of context clues worksheets on terms from economics and finance, are two context clues worksheets on finance as a noun and a verb. As a verb, it is only used transitively, so don’t forget your direct object.
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.
It’s a cool and pleasant Tuesday morning in New York City, a nice break from the brutal heat and humidity of the past week. Here, if you have any use for them, are three context clues worksheets on command as an adjective, a noun, and a verb.
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.
As with supply, it has taken me an inexplicably long time (given my current posting at the High School of Economics & Finance in Lower Manhattan) to create context clues for demand. So, here is a context clues worksheet on demand as a noun and another for demand as a verb to accompany the context clues worksheets below on supply as a noun and a verb.
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.
As I work mostly at outdoor pubs and cafes through the summer, I write longhand in a Moleskine notebook. I’ve ended up writing a lot of new context clues worksheets, mostly because they’re easy and quick to contrive. Considering that I work in an economics-and-finance-themed public high school, I don’t know why it has taken me so long to write a context clues worksheet for supply as a noun or another for supply used as a verb. But here they are now, for your use if you need 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.
While I was away in Vermont last month, I barely opened my computer and so skipped two Fridays, which is the day I have habitually posted my Weekly Texts. Ergo, another midweek Text to make up for those Fridays. First, here are two context clues worksheets on motive and motivation (both nouns) to help students understand these oft-used words in the English language. Then, because I work in a high school with an economics and finance theme, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the profit motive.
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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