Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Cultural Literacy: Henry Aaron

Posted on February 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

Sadly, we recently lost him; here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Henry Aaron. If you’re interested in an Everyday Edit worksheet on this exemplary American and great athlete, you can find one here. Moreover, I have a number of materials on Mr. Aaron prepared for publication here, so stay tuned if you or your students are interested in him–and don’t forget to use the search bar on the homepage of this blog.

If you are interested in learning about Hank Aaron’s Civil Rights activism, check out his friendship with the legendary Wisconsin Civil Rights attorney Vel Phillips.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , , , , , ,

Cultural Literacy: Cameroon

Posted on February 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Cameroon, the west-central African nation. This is a full-page worksheet with nine questions, so it might be appropriate for independent practice. Alas, it only touches on this nation’s colonial past. If I set out to make more of this document, I would emphasize Cameroon’s colonial past as part of a larger examination of the motives and depredations of colonialism in Africa and, indeed, worldwide. It’s time once and for all to come clean about this stain on history.

One or two simple questions should suffice to open a critical inquiry on colonialism in Cameroon: “How did France and Britain gain control over the west-central nation of Cameroon,” or “Why did France and Britain colonize Cameroon.” The second question, I imagine, will help to clarify what there was to exploit or expropriate in this area of the African continent.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , , , ,

Cultural Literacy: Count Basie

Posted on February 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

Today is February first, which means that Black History Month 2021 begins today. I normally bloviate on this topic, but I’ll leave it alone this year other than to say that in this country, and on this blog, every month is Black History Month. That’s not to say Mark’s Text Terminal won’t observe the month–it will. In fact, I developed a raft of new Cultural Literacy worksheets with topics and themes in Black History, as well as transcribed a number of lengthy quotes to post as well.

Let’s start off the month with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Count Basie. Do you know his music? If not, then check out this killer 1965 performance of a Basie Band chestnut, “Jumping at the Woodside.”

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , , , , ,

A Lesson Plan on Cooking Conversions from The Order of Things

Posted on January 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on cooking conversions from The Order of Things. This worksheet with a list as a reading and several comprehension questions (with room to add several more in this Microsoft Word-formatted open source, easily manipulable document) is the principal reading and writing work of the 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, Reference, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

Tagged , , , , ,

Cultural Literacy: Nero

Posted on January 28, 2021 | Leave a comment

It is now one week and one day since the American Nero trundled off to Florida to wallow in self-pity, nurture grudges, and play golf. So now is a good time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Roman Emperor Nero. 

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , ,

The Holocaust

Posted on January 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

I’m not proud of the fact that somehow that it nearly escaped my notice that today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On January 27, 1945, the Red Army, conducting the Vistula-Oder Offensive, fought its way through eastern Poland and along the way liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. In a time when Holocaust denial is actually taken seriously, and white supremacist thugs storm the United States capitol wearing “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirts, now is the time to make sure young people understand this depraved moment in history.

So here is a reading on the Holocaust and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet in observance and remembrance of this civilizational catastrophe.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , , ,

Common Errors in English Usage: Perspective (n), Prospective (adj)

Posted on January 26, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on sorting out the use of the noun perspective and the adjective prospective. These are a couple of words worth knowing and being able to use properly–especially for high school seniors who are in the process of becoming prospective students at post-secondary institutions. Incidentally, since these are very near homophones, and may indeed sound like homophones to English language learners, I’ve tagged this post as such.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Worksheets

Tagged , ,

Leo Tolstoy

Posted on January 25, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on Leo Tolstoy and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Do high school students read Tolstoy–or any of the big Russian authors, for that matter? I prepared these documents last week after a high school chum of mine mentioned in correspondence that he’d read Anna Karenina at our high school. Ours was a somewhat unusual (and unusually small) school, but not that far out of the mainstream–though I did read Richard Brautigan for the first time there.

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.

Leave a comment

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

Tagged , , , , ,

The Weekly Text, January 22, 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Predicate Adjective

Posted on January 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

It’s an important syntactical structure and area of English usage, so I have written several lessons on the predicate adjective; I want students to have this sentence structure and its parts, especially linking verbs, down cold. So, this week’s Text is yet another lesson plan on the predicate adjective.

I open this lesson with this worksheet on the Latinism N.B., or nota bene. The first time I saw this abbreviation on a piece of my Russian language homework in college, I looked it up and mastered its use. It is a phrase students ought to know. This is the scaffolded worksheet on using the predicate adjectives at the center of the lesson, and here is the teacher’s copy of the worksheet for ease of teaching this lesson.

There are two learning supports (ultimately, I’d plan to make four, for, again, scaffolded teaching and learning). The first one is organized to provide extra support for students who need it; the second one is less organized and structured and therefore places greater demand on heuristics and the ability to search for just the right word.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, Reference, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

Tagged , , , , ,

Approbation (n)

Posted on January 21, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun approbation.  It means “an act of approving formally or officially: COMMENDATION, PRAISE” and has an adjectival form in approbatory.

Approbation is not exactly the most commonly used word in the English language. That may in fact be its strength in using this document to teach inferring from context as a reading strategy. When students don’t know a word this obscure, in my experience, they derive satisfaction in the act of defining it from the context in which it is embedded. Will your students begin expressing to their friends and siblings about their approbation and disapprobation (which means, unsurprisingly, “the act or state of disapproving : the state of being disapproved : CONDEMNATION”) for menu choices, girlfriends or boyfriends, or musical preferences? Probably not. But they will have an opportunity to practice an important, indeed key, reading comprehension strategy by defining this word from the context in which it appears.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , ,