Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

The Weekly Text, June 24, 2016: Two Short Exercises on the Greek Word Roots Leuk/o. Leuc/o, and Nephr/o

Posted on June 24, 2016 | Leave a comment

Classes are over, Regents testing is finished, and the halls in this school are eerily quiet. I’m enjoying some long stretches of uninterrupted planning time. Focusing on developing some more Greek word root worksheets–for words that are more abstract and therefore a bit more difficult to work with for struggling students–I’ve developed a small group of them that can be used as do-now exercises at the beginning of a period. These types of tasks aid me in getting teenagers settled after that second bell rings, and therefore focused for the primary lesson of the day.

Word root worksheets, in my classroom, are meant to accomplish several things, but three are salient: the first is to allow students a chance to work with a dictionary, whether that’s in book form or an app on a smartphone (I encourage students to use whatever works best with their learning styles); second, word root exercises aid students in building their vocabularies quickly; third, word root work fosters pattern recognition, with which, in my experience, struggling students need all the help they can get.

Coincidentally, as I was preparing these worksheets, the National Association of Special Education Teachers posted this article on pattern recognition and language acquisition on Facebook. So I rolled “Theme from the Vindicators” by the Fleshtones, and kept at it.

This week’s Text comes from the fruits of my recent labors, to wit, two do-now exercises on the Greek word roots leuk/o and leuc/o, and nephr/o. Students simply read the definitions, then use the common words–the pattern, that is–to identify the meanings of the roots. For leuk/o and leuc/o. the meanings are white and colorless; for nephr/o, the meaning is kidney (which is why if you have kidney disease, you consult a nephrologist).

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, June 17, 2016: A Trove of Documents for Teaching the Latin Word Roots for Mother and Father

Posted on June 17, 2016 | Leave a comment

We’re in the home stretch of the school year, and not a moment to soon: about three weeks ago, several students I work with began arriving with shell-shocked looks on their faces, and even further attenuation in their attention spans.

I understand. I feel how they look, as I regularly tell them.

This week’s Text is two context clues worksheets on two essential words, paternal and maternal. If you haven’t used these before, you might find the users’ manual for context clues worksheets useful. These complement a couple of word root worksheets I posted in March: the first one is on the  Latin word roots patr, patri and pater,  and the second on the Latin word roots mat, matri, and mater.

As always, if you find these worksheets useful, I would be much obliged to hear how–particularly if you modified them for your classroom.

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, May 20, 2016: Three Context Clues Worksheets on Exegesis (n), Exegete (n), and Exegetical (adj)

Posted on May 20, 2016 | Leave a comment

As the school year wanes, I’m working on The Weekly Texts for the summer months. I plan a lengthy break from computer screens and keyboards. So, I’ll prepare a bunch of posts, then publish them from my smartphone. If you’re a user of this blog who links through from the AFT’s Share My Lesson Plan site, nota bene that I won’t be able to post material there for much of the summer. You may want to point your browser directly to Mark’s Text Terminal; I’ll post a new Text every Friday throughout the summer.

For this week, here are three context clues worksheets on the words exegesis, exegete and exegetical. If you teach English, and particularly novels, poems etc., these are three words your students, arguably, ought to know. In any case, this trio also shows students something about word roots and morphology, and that can be taught actively, or left for students to infer.

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, 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, December 4, 2015: A Worksheet on the Greek Word Root Phobia

Posted on December 4, 2015 | Leave a comment

OK, here’s a quick weekly text, starting with a context clues worksheet on the noun triskaidedaphobia. This might well serve as a template for the context clues worksheet in general–you will notice, as your students probably will, that this word means fear of the number 13. I believe the context for inferring meaning is fairly strong in these sentences.

This might also be a good time to use this worksheet on the Greek word root phobia, the utility of which I expect is obvious. This root shows up in so many words in English that knowledge of it is nothing short of de rigeur. 

Addendum, May 28, 2019. Here is a comprehensive list of phobias from the pages of the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) that might interest your students; kids to tend to find this kind of thing fascinating.

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 25, 2015: Two Context Clues Worksheets on the Noun Fiction and the Verb Fictionalize

Posted on November 25, 2015 | Leave a comment

Here’s a rare Weekly Text on a Wednesday, which I post now so that I can enjoy four solid days away from this computer screen. You might find these two context clues worksheets on the noun fiction and the verb fictionalize 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, October 23, 2015: Documents for Teaching Word and Concepts Stemming from the Latin Word Root Agr-o and Agri

Posted on October 23, 2015 | Leave a comment

This week I offer some word study work on a key word and concept in Freshman Global Studies here in New York State (and elsewhere, I must assume), to wit, agriculture. For starters, here is a worksheet on the Latin word roots agr-o and agri. These are relatively productive roots–they mean “crop production” and “field”– and the words on this worksheet are in common use in American English as well as appearing on various high stakes college and graduate school entry exams. You may need the Word Root Worksheets Users’ Manual to use this material.

I’ve also included two context clues worksheets for the words agriculture and agrarian to solidify understanding of  these words’ meaning by showing them in use in context. To use these, you may want to take a look at the Focus on One Word Worksheets Users’ Manual.

That’s it! It’s the busy time of the school year–then again, between Labor Day and the last day of school, when are teachers not busy?

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.

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The Weekly Text, October 9, 2015: An Exercise on the Greek Word Roots Syn, Sym, Syl, and Sys

Posted on October 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

Because I teach a relatively large population of native Spanish speakers (who are, of course, bilingual, which often makes their low levels of literacy confounding to me), I tend to assign Latin word roots to freshmen, and Greek word roots to sophomores. It goes without saying that I aim to show freshmen, by way of Latin word roots, the commonalities between their native tongue and English–which is, of course, Latin and its roots.

Accordingly, when I publish word root worksheets, I’ll alternate between Latin and Greek roots. This week’s Text is a worksheet on the Greek word roots syn, sym, syl, and sys. As you can see, these are very productive roots–they mean together and same–which are at the base of a number of key high school vocabulary words, not the least of which, for both students and teachers, is synthesis.

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, October 2, 2015: A Lesson Plan on Genocide

Posted on October 2, 2015 | Leave a comment

We teachers in Lower Manhattan are fortunate to have the Museum of Jewish Heritage–A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in our precincts, and in most cases within walking distance. The Museum is diverse (as I write this, it is running an exhibition on design called “Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism”) but its Core Exhibition addresses the 100-year-or-so period in Europe, and the Jewish experience there, surrounding the Holocaust.

The Museum is generous with opportunities for New York City public schools to attend exhibits and educational programs. Their programs are sophisticated and students report back, even those alienated from school, that they found the experience quite meaningful.

This is a reading and writing lesson on genocide designed to equip students with prior knowledge of a key concept that will enable them to better understand the context of their museum visit. There are two do-now exercises, so if you’re unfamiliar with their use, you’ll need the Focus on One Word Worksheets Users’ Manual as well as the explanation of asterisks in the About Weekly Texts page on the banner above this entry. Although I originally taught this as a stand-alone special topic lesson, I have incorporated it into a larger Freshman Global Studies unit, so the lesson plan lacks standards to rationalize it. Again, if you look at the About Weekly Texts page, you’ll find typescripts (from which you can copy and paste standards) of the complete English Language Arts and Social Studies Common Core Standards.

Genocide is nobody’s idea of a pleasant topic for conversation;  United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power has aptly called it it, in her book of the same name, “a problem from hell.” As context for a visit to A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, a relatively deep understanding of genocide and its impetuses is de rigeur. This lesson, I hope, will help students develop their own understanding of that context.

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 14, 2015: An Exercise on the Latin Word Root Bell

Posted on August 14, 2015 | Leave a comment

Here, at last, is what I hope I can focus on sufficiently to sustain as the gravamen of Mark’s Text Terminal, The Weekly Text. In each of these weekly installments I’ll post something I’ve developed to assist struggling students in building their literacy skills. I make no promises–the school year can get quite busy–but I will do what I can to publish something new every week.

This inaugural Weekly Text is a vocabulary building worksheet that derives from the Latinate word root bell. Bell means war and is at the root of several words in English (i.e. bellicose, belligerent, and, as below, antebellum). I imagine most educators would agree that learned people ought to understand and know how to use these words. Unsurprisingly, most of these words have cognates in the Romance languages, as antebellum does. If you’re teaching English language learners, the Latinate word root is a bridge between English and Spanish.

These words are mostly abstract, but carry a hint, as so many Latin nouns themselves do, of the concrete. There is room in the lesson or lessons one might write to attend this worksheet for an exploration of the differences between concrete and abstract nouns. Furthermore, there is room for a discussion on the concepts represented here, and some questions teachers might ask are: What is war? What does war look like? What is the difference between war and peace? What is bellicose speech and behavior? How can a society know, by the bellicose or belligerent behavior of some of its members, that it is at risk of going to war?  Finally, I generally make sure students understand the difference between belligerent as an adjective and a noun, because in the latter case, the word can turn up in a sentence like The Axis and the Allies were the belligerents in World War II. In this sentence, students need to understand that belligerents means combatants.

Finally, here’s the Word Root Worksheets Users’ Manual document for a fuller exegesis of this type of worksheet.

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.

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