Tag Archives: learning supports

The Weekly Text, May 13, 2016: A Learning Support and Worksheet on Citing Sources in Research Papers

Posted on May 13, 2016 | Leave a comment

It’s Friday the 13th! I hope nothing bad happens to you today.

Although I teach struggling students, I hold them to high standards. One way I can do that–and that is the purpose of this website, incidentally–is to adapt the curriculum in a way that has them doing the same work, though not at the same pace or in the same manner, as their peers working in the general education curriculum. I’m particularly interested in helping students learn to write synthetic research papers, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in these pages. Needless to say, students struggling with literacy, executive skills, issues with focus and attention, impulse control, or general apathy need support, and plenty of it, to navigate a project of the scope of most research papers.

Here is a a worksheet that assists students in determining when to cite sources in a synthetic research paper; this is the same text as the worksheet, but rearranged and annotated as a learning support.

As always, I hope you find this material useful, and I’d be grateful to hear how you’ve used it and/or adapted 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, April 22, 2016: A Glossary of Basic Poetic Terms

Posted on April 22, 2016 | Leave a comment

Next week is my badly needed spring break, so Mark’s Text Terminal will be on sabbatical, enjoying spring weather and light. I’ll return with a fresh Weekly Text on Friday, May 6. For today, here is a glossary of basic poetic terms. One of these days I’m going to write a unit to accompany this support. This learning support is several years old, and it is an example of the kind of cart-before-the-horse planning I used as a novice teacher. I suspect this will be useful for teachers–if nothing else, it can be manipulated to serve your purposes in teaching poetry and poetic from.

Happy Spring! See you again on May 6.

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, July 1, 2016: A Trove of Documents for a Professional Development Inquiry into Executive Skills

Posted on March 31, 2016 | Leave a comment

Are you done with the 2015-2016 school year? I gather that our school year here in New York City goes much later than other districts in the United States. Our last day was Tuesday the 28th.

So it’s summer break! I always schedule my share of fun for these months, but I also work some–because I want to. You can continue to look for the Weekly Text at Mark’s Text Terminal, because I only plan to miss three Fridays during the summer.

Over the years, as an employee of the New York City Department of Education, I’ve experienced a mixed bag of professional development sessions. A few years ago, at least in the school in which I presently serve, teachers were responsible for performing professional inquiry groups, which selected its own topic for, well, inquiry, and analysis, germane to the work we do, but obviously for improving pedagogy. For this week, then, here are–in three separate links–the raw materials for a professional development presentation on executive skills and function I wrote for the group I joined in the 2011-2012 school year.

First up are the the proposal for this inquiry group, and a learning support for teachers, which are the teacher’s materials for this presentation; second, here are four student surveys to assess executive skills; third, and finally, here is a letter explaining these surveys to students. I adapted the student surveys from Ellen Galinsky’s excellent book Mind in the Making.

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, March 24, 2016: A Learning Support on the Use of Comparative and Superlative Adjectives

Posted on March 24, 2016 | Leave a comment

We’re off for Good Friday tomorrow, so I’m posting this week’s text this (Thursday) morning, so that I can spend the day doing something else besides looking at my computer screen–maybe looking at blue skies and budding trees.

So–very quickly–here is learning support on the formation of comparative and superlative adjectives that I use with a couple of lessons from my adjectives unit. As always, if you find it useful, I’d like to hear your comments.

And Happy Passover, Happy Easter, and Happy Spring!

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, March 11, 2016: A Learning Support on Latinisms and Latin Abbreviations

Posted on March 11, 2016 | Leave a comment

Phew, busy week. I’ll keep this short so I can sustain some stamina to get through this afternoon’s round (after being here last evening until almost eight for same) of parent-teacher conferences.

So, here is a learning support for Latinisms and Latin abbreviations that commonly appear in English expository prose. These terms often trip up students, and in any case, I believe strongly that we ought to be teaching, as part of a broader curriculum for teaching writing, the more common of these, like e.g. and i.e., if not viz. and Q.E.D.

But what do you think? Should we bother with this at all? I welcome (i.e. seek, beg for, pursue, wheedle after, crave) your comments.

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, January 29, 2016: Two Learning Supports on Transition Words

Posted on January 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

Yesterday was the final day of New York State’s biannual exercise in standardized testing, the Regents Examinations.  I’ve had time to revise a structured research paper unit on the Holocaust I developed a few years ago to introduce struggling students to methods for undertaking such a project. I found two learning supports for using transition words in expository prose amid this unit (I hadn’t looked at it in a couple of years), which are distinct only in their layout.

The second one, in outline form, might well be useful in a lesson or short unit on outlining. I’m pondering how I might work with it that way. If you see something effective in it for work on outlining, perhaps this structured outlining blank will be of some value to you.

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, January 15, 2016: Two Glossaries on the Parts of Speech

Posted on January 15, 2016 | Leave a comment

It has been a hectic week, characteristic of January in this school, which is always a concatenation of testing and extracurricular activities. For this week’s text, I offer up a couple of learning supports. The first is a basic glossary of the parts of the speech. This version of this support contains simple descriptions of each of the parts of speech with a few spare examples of their use. The second is a supported glossary of the parts of speech which includes a fuller description of each part of speech, along with some sentences that demonstrate their use.

If you use these, as always, I’d very much like to hear how; moreover, I’d like to hear from you if you have any suggestions about how I might further develop or improve these learning supports–or how you have done so.

Earlier this week, I had a very interesting experience teaching the words empirical and empiricism, by way of context clues worksheets, to some of the struggling readers and learners whom I serve. In both of the classes in which I used these worksheets, students, secondary to my Socratic questioning, were able to infer the meanings of both of these highly abstract words. Next week or the week after, as time permits, I plan to post these worksheets with a blog post on the line of questioning I used to elicit the meanings of these words.

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, January 8, 2016: A Lesson Plan on Teaching the Ordinal Centuries

Posted on January 8, 2016 | Leave a comment

Over the years, I have seen students suffer persistent confusion over the difference between the cardinal (counting numbers) and ordinal (numbers that place things in rank or order) numbers historians, and therefore social studies teachers, use to name and number centuries. It goes without saying, I assume, that a lack of understanding of this basic means of understanding historical time leads to confusion about the scope, sequence and, indeed, sweep of history. Understanding this discourse is by any standard, I should think, necessary for any basic understanding of what is going on in a social studies classroom.

Yet, I have not seen this way of understanding historical time taught explicitly in my thirteen years as a social studies/English/special education teacher.

So, fresh from Mark’s Text Terminal for the New Year, here is a complete lesson plan on teaching the ordinal centuries. Under this link you’ll find a lesson plan, two context clues for the noun phrase cardinal number and the adjective ordinal (and you may want to take a look at the Focus on One Word Worksheets Users’ Manual to work with those), and a scaffolded worksheet.

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 18, 2015: A Lesson Plan on Using Conjunctions

Posted on December 18, 2015 | Leave a comment

Here is the final Weekly Text of 2015. I plan to avoid, to the greatest extent possible over the holiday break, this computer screen. I’ve just completed the final piece of my cycle of units on the parts of speech, an eight-lesson unit on conjunctions (I’ve previously posted the learning support on the most commonly used conjunctions that you’ll very likely need to use the material on this post).

So,  here is the second lesson on conjunctions from this unit, which gives struggling students some structured and independent practice at using the coordinating conjunctions. While this Word document includes the lesson plan, first do-now exercise (a homophone worksheet which you may need the Homophone Worksheets Users’ Manual to use), a structured worksheet, and a teacher’s answer key, it does not include the second do-now worksheet, an Everyday Edit on Beethoven. Incidentally, if you like this Everyday Edit, you can find more of them at the Education World Everyday Edits page, where the folks who operate that site generously give them away as tear-offs.

That’s it! I wish you and yours a joyous holiday season. I’ll see you again in the New Year.

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 11, 2015: A Learning Support on the Most Commonly Used Prepositions

Posted on December 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

After a long absence for a basic civic responsibility, I am back at work, teaching and writing lesson plans. It’s the end of a marking period, and my students, to my great surprise, are glad to have me back. So I’m quite busy trying to catch up with paperwork and engage my students in creating meaning. Here, in the penultimate text for 2015 (I don’t plan to post Weekly Texts over the holiday break) is a learning support for the most commonly used prepositions in the English language.

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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