Tag Archives: cultural literacy

The Weekly Text, January 13, 2017: An Introductory Lesson on Adverbs

Posted on January 13, 2017 | Leave a comment

It’s Friday the thirteenth, and time for another Weekly Text. I’ve begun revising my unit on adverbs, so this week, I offer you a lesson plan that introduces students to adverbs.

Like most if not all of the lessons I post here, I’ve prepared this one to take place over two days, given the contingencies of attention issues, disruptive behavior, and the like. So, there are two do-now exercises to open this lesson: the first is this do-now Cultural Literacy Worksheet on run-on sentences; the second is a context clues worksheet on the adjective superlative. (It’s worth mentioning in passing that this word is also used to describe the utmost degree of adjectives; some time ago I posted the introductory lesson of my adjectives unit, and over time I’ll post the entire unit, one lesson of which covers the degrees–synthetic, comparative, and superlative–of adjectives, so this do-now exercise might also serve you well in that capacity.)

The mainstay of the lesson is a scaffolded worksheet on understanding adverbs and their use. I imagine you will find the teachers’copy/answer key for the worksheet.

That’s it until next 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.

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The Weekly Text, November 18, 2016: Two Cultural Literacy Worksheets on Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

Posted on November 18, 2016 | Leave a comment

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.

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The Weekly Text, August 19, 2016: An Introductory Lesson on Nouns

Posted on August 19, 2016 | Leave a comment

Over the years, I have become convinced of the utility of teaching the parts of speech in order to build literacy in general, and in particular to assist students in developing their own understanding of how to write grammatically complete, syntactically meaningful, and stylish sentences. To that end, I have developed units for each of the parts of speech, and these constitute an almost-year-long cycle of English Language Arts instruction.

So, this weeks text is the first lesson of the first unit of this cycle, on nouns. This lesson calls upon students to use this teacher-authored reading passage to identify all the nouns in it; as you will see, this is a three-part scaffold that asks students to read, then apply their understanding of nouns, first in modified cloze exercises, then in writing sentences from subject to period. The lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy do-now exercise on syntax. You might also find useful this singular and plural nouns formation review

You’ll notice that the plan for this lesson doesn’t list the standards met. Because of the way I manage my work flow, I list all the standards on the overarching unit plan. (That way if I must print a lesson plan to appease a bureaucrat, I don’t burn too much ink.) For that reason, I have posted typescript copies of the Common Core Standards I use in my practice  in the About Weekly Texts page that is above the banner photo on the home page for this site. They are in the penultimate paragraph there.

22 September 2016, Post Scriptum: I have just updated the singular and plural nouns formation review worksheet linked to above.

15 July 2022, Post Scriptum: I have revised the work for this lesson. The reading and worksheet now contains a reading from The Fight (Boston, MacMillan, 1975), Norman Mailer’s account of the legendary “Rumble in the Jungle” in 1974; it follows then that the teacher’s copy of the worksheet received an update as well.

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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An Early August, Midweek Text: Motive (n), Motivation (n), and the Profit Motive

Posted on August 10, 2016 | Leave a comment

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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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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