Tag Archives: learning supports

A Goal-Setting Form for Writing

Posted on December 11, 2019 | Leave a comment

This morning, after reading a few pages a day for a couple of months, I finally finished Martha Stone Wiske’s (she edited) excellent book Teaching for Understanding: Linking Practice with Research (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998). Like the National Research Council’s How People Learn, this book is a road map to the kind of deep conceptual teaching I yearn to do.

I grabbed this goal-setting form for writing from the book’s pages, if you can use it.

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, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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A Glossary of Linguistic Terms

Posted on December 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

I recently started writing a phonics unit based on Denise Eide’s excellent book Uncovering the Logic of English: A Common-Sense Approach to Reading, Spelling and Literacy (Minneapolis: Pedia Learning Inc, 2011). In the process of assembling materials for this unit, I typed up this glossary of linguistic terms from the book. It’s probably useful as a learning support for both teachers and students.

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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A Lesson Plan on Linking Verbs

Posted on December 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here is a complete lesson plan on linking verbs. Because sentences with predicate adjectives are one of the most commonly used structures in both English prose and speech, I teach them several times in the course of the parts of speech unit I wrote several years ago (and continue to revise).

Anyway, here is the Cultural Literacy worksheet on intransitive verbs with which I open this lesson after a class break. This scaffolded worksheet on linking verbs is at the center of this lesson. Finally, here is a learning support on the verb to be to help students conjugate this often confusing 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.

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

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Term of Art: Exposition

Posted on December 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Exposition: Exposition, or expository writing, is traditionally understood as writing that aims to transmit information to presumably interested parties as distinguished from writing that aims to persuade the reader. As there will be elements of persuasive writing in expository, so also will there be elements of the expository in persuasive.

In the following discussion, however, the perspective is that of rhetorical analysis, which regards all written communication (including the note on the refrigerator door) as guided by a communicative/persuasive purpose. Exposition is, then, that type of prose writing that attempts to create, in its target audience, the attitude that the writer is objectively presenting the facts relative to a given subject. Exposition thus is not a division of prose discourse according to intent, but rather represents a tone that the writer wishes the reader to accept as ‘factual.’ The writer of exposition cultivates a tone designed to allow (encourage) the reader to think that the writer has no specific interest in, or position in regard to, the subject matter presented.

Excerpted from: Trail, George Y. Rhetorical Terms and Concepts: A Contemporary Glossary. New York: Harcourt Brace, 2000.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

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The Weekly Text, November 8, 2019: A Lesson Plan on the Art of Summarizing

Posted on November 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

Alright, this week’s Text is a lesson plan on the art of summarizing which is part of a bigger unit on argumentation that I wrote–but used only once–a couple of years ago.

This context clues worksheet on the verb concede (which is used transitively, but can be used intransitively, according to Merriam-Webster’s, by writing to make concession) opens the lesson. I use this exemplar of a summary, drawn from the book that informs this unit, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (New York: Norton, 2018) as a learning support and model text. This learning support on the verbs used in the rhetorical figures of argumentation supplies students with the vocabulary they require to postulate and write sound arguments. Here are the two exercises for summarizing that are at the center of this lesson. Finally, here is the worksheet for this lesson that contains the full text of the exemplar linked to above.

And that’s it for another week at Mark’s Text Terminal. Enjoy the weekend.

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, Reference, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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Two Learning Supports on Abbreviations and Symbols

Posted on October 24, 2019 | Leave a comment

While I don’t mean to say that the method doesn’t have universal application–it does, and I think it’s probably the best way to build literacy, particularly in procedural knowledge of English prose–I think Hochman and Wexler’s The Writing Revolution curriculum might have particularly effective application in the school in which I presently serve.

So, I have returned to working up some new curriculum for social studies base on it. This morning I made two learning supports, the first one on abbreviations and the second one on symbols. Both documents are in Microsoft Word (as is just everything here at Mark’s Text Terminal), so you can alter them to your students’ needs.

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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Two Worksheets on the Commutative Property of Multiplication

Posted on October 4, 2019 | Leave a comment

Unless my schedule changes again (always a possibility, alas). these two worksheets on the commutative law of multiplication will be the last math-related material you’ll see on Mark’s Text Terminal for awhile.

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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Two Basic Worksheets for Subtraction

Posted on October 4, 2019 | Leave a comment

Now, as it happens, I am not teaching math after all. So, I have a few more things I can post that I developed as I worked toward building a scaffolded curriculum for the basic operations. These two basic subtraction worksheets are the first of four more posts I’ll publish containing these materials.

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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Three Worksheets on Rounding Numbers

Posted on October 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here are three worksheets on rounding numbers I wrote yesterday. I plan to use them in the run-up to a longish unit on multiplication.

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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Five More Basic Multiplication Worksheets

Posted on September 27, 2019 | Leave a comment

OK, heading into the weekend I want to have my desk clear, so here is a second set of five basic multiplication worksheets along with the multiplication table that supports the work these documents prescribe.

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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