Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

The Weekly Text, 30 June 2023: Free to Be You and Me

Posted on June 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

It seems to me that there are a lot of politicians in the United States, most if not all of them Republicans, who are belligerently opposed (I’m thinking of you, Ron DeSantis, above all others here) to the changing concepts of gender in our culture. Earlier in my life, these same troglodytes (is it fair to call them troglodytes? It seems to be a guy like DeSantis makes the average troglodyte look like Bertrand Russell) were exercised by Free to Be You and Me.  James Dobson, noted evangelist and right-wing scold, took particular offense and the changing gender roles in our society that this television show discussed–what a surprise!

This week’s Text is this short reading on Free To Be You and Me along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Nota bene, please, that the original sound recording for this television broadcast is available on the streaming music service I subscribe to, so I’ll bet it’s on yours 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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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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Cultural Literacy: Prime Number

Posted on June 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a prime number. This is a half-page worksheet with a one-sentence reading, which is actually two clauses separated by a semicolon, and two comprehension questions. The reading might require some simplification and editing if you are dealing with English language learners or emergent readers. That won’t be a problem as this document, like most of what you’ll find here at Mark’s Text Terminal, is formatted in Microsoft Word for the express purpose of flexibility in the teacher’s hand.

In any event, however, this is an elegantly simple worksheet on a relatively simple concept in mathematics.

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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Posted in Independent Practice, Worksheets

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Code Word

Posted on June 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Code Word: A code name: a word with a covert meaning, such as a sociological generality or a euphemism with an inexplicit but unmistakable signification to certain people. E.g. the Marxist term ‘rootless cosmopolite’ for Jew; word of menace; shibboleth.

‘He noticed it in her friends, too—that nearly manic combing of the hair, the chewing gum and talk about music. They disparaged everything, and their talk was full of clichés and code words.’ Anne Beattie, Falling in Place.”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference

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Common English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Consent

Posted on June 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the verb consent as followed by an infinitive. I consent to distribute these curricular materials in spite of their manifestly dubious value.

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, Friday 23 June 2023: History of Hip-Hop Lesson 16, Concluding Assessment and Reflection

Posted on June 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

Alright, here, finally, is the sixteenth and final lesson plan of the History of Hip-Hop Unit. I use this Cultural Literacy worksheet on racism as a do-now exercise. The work of this lesson, which I have allowed to play out over two or three days, is this concluding assessment and reflection and this metacognitive assessment worksheet.

And that, gentle reader, is that. There are now sixteen lessons available on the History of Hip-Hop at Mark’s Text Terminal.

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, Lesson Plans, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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Cultural Literacy: Emancipation Proclamation

Posted on June 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

For Juneteenth 2023, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Emancipation Proclamation. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences, each of them longish compounds, and four comprehension questions. Like so many of these Cultural Literacy squibs, this one’s brevity does not attenuate its thoroughness. Indeed, it notes, with historical accuracy, that “In itself, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves, because it applied only to rebellious areas that the federal government did not then control.” That is an important fact to keep in mind when analyzing this document. Put another way, the Emancipation Proclamation was in some measure a symbolic gesture.

By 19 July 1865, now known as Juneteenth, however, the Confederacy was vanquished and the Emancipation Proclamation carried the force of law.

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

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Blog Post Number 6,001

Posted on June 16, 2023 | Leave a comment

OK, here is another milestone on this blog, passing the six-thousandth post. I don’t have much to offer in the way of commemoration, but I did find some preliminary documents in a unit I planned to write on interjections. These are pretty basic; I didn’t proceed with developing the unit for a variety of reasons, though primarily because I didn’t think this relatively minor part of speech required a full unit. Put another way, I decided that if students knew (they did and probably still do) that Homer Simpson says “d’oh” and Peter Griffin says “crap” when something annoyed, vexed, or otherwise exercised them, then they understood that an interjection, mainly, was “a cry or inarticulate utterance (such as Alas! ouch! phooey! ugh!) expressing an emotion.”

So, without further ado, here are the unit plan in barest outline, with the similarly graphically configured first lesson plan and second lesson plan, and, finally, this interjections review worksheet.

That’s it. Now it’s on to 7,000.

This is the place where I usually plead for peer review and notifications about typos in documents. There’s nothing much to comment on with these documents, which are basically templates. Nonetheless, if you think interjections require their own lesson, or even unit, I would be interested in hearing about that thought.

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Posted in Announcement, English Language Arts, Lesson Plans, Worksheets

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Concepts in Sociology: Acculturation

Posted on June 16, 2023 | Leave a comment

Last September, about four days before the beginning of the school year, I learned that I was tasked with teaching a sociology elective in my school. There was, of course, no curriculum. It happens that I know something about the domain, but not enough to teach it effectively.

So, I went write to work reading, taking notes, accumulating text, and trying to synthesize it all into something that had relatively expansive scope and logical sequence. As usual, other responsibilities intervened, and I often found myself without a proper lesson to teach. Which brings us to this worksheet on acculturation. I prepared this, and sixty-nine others like it, on the fly when I needed something in a hurry.

So, if you see the “Concepts in Sociology” header on a blog post, it will be one of these documents. I’d be interested, as below and always, if you use these materials in your classroom and how. Most of them are relatively short, and might be appropriate for do-now exercises at the beginning of a class period. Many of them might be usefully integrated into social studies or English language arts lessons, depending on the texts and approach you’re using in those domains.

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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Cultural Literacy: William Blake

Posted on June 16, 2023 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on William Blake. When I began teaching in New York City in 2003, his poem “The Chimney Sweeper” was included on at least a couple of New York State’s high-stakes Regents’ Tests–so I imagine I prepared this document to introduce students–and with a four-sentence reading with three comprehension questions, I think this worksheet serves its purpose–to Blake.

In my high school year, after being directed toward William Blake by Allen Ginsberg and The Fugs (and yes, I stipulate I went to high school in a very different time than today), I started reading him and have never stopped.

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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Wangle (vi/vt)

Posted on June 16, 2023 | Leave a comment

This context clues worksheet on the verb wangle, I think, came into being when this intransitive and transitive verb surfaced as the Word of the Day on Merriam-Webster, most likely during the pandemic. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard this word used without an invitation following it. In any case, used intransitively, wangle means “to resort to trickery or devious methods.” Transitively, and this is where your direct object, the commonly used an invitation comes into play, wangle means “to adjust or manipulate for personal or fraudulent ends,”  to make or get by devious means, and finagle.

I’m hard pressed to defend this as necessary word in the high school vocabulary. It has an onomatopoeic quality that probably, when wangle is used with an invitation, will provide sufficient context for students to pick it up passively–especially since the word will most likely be used in a conversation about a social event. Finally, to as I prepared this this post, I couldn’t help but thing once again about Joseph Mitchell’s warning about “tinsel words.”

But what do you think?

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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Posted in English Language Arts, Worksheets

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