Tag Archives: numeracy

The Weekly Text, 14 January 2022: A Lesson Plan on the Compound Preposition

Posted on January 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is this lesson plan on using compound prepositions.

I open this lesson with this Everyday Edit worksheet on Eleanor Roosevelt; if this lesson goes into a second day, here is another on time zones. Incidentally, if you and your students find these Everyday Edit worksheet edifying (and therefore rewarding), the good people at Education World generously distribute a yearlong supply of them at no charge.

Here is the scaffolded worksheet that is the principal work of this lesson. And, at last, here is the teacher’s copy of same.

And that is it for another 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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Word Root Exercise: Micro-

Posted on January 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the Greek root micro-. This root is so productive in English that I imagine it would be hard to find anyone over the age of five who doesn’t understand that it means “small.” It also means, according to the book from which I drew the text at the base of all the word root exercises found on this blog, “millionth.”

This productive root can be found at the base of such high-frequency words in general discourse as microphone and microwave as well as scientific vocabulary like microbe and microclimate.

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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Real Numbers

Posted on January 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on real numbers along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I want to state unequivocally that not only am I not a math teacher, I was a terrible math student. I consider my lack of understanding of the fundamentals of mathematics–by which I mean, I suppose, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry–something a personal failing. And while I have always found Fran Leibowitz’s indictment of algebra (“In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra”) humorous, it is pretty thin gruel when I attempt to take some comfort in my own ignorance of the subject.

At a couple of points in my otherwise comfortably math-free teaching career, I have been called upon to teach math (which for me means arithmetic, or even basic numeracy) to small classes of special needs students. Hence the origins of these documents.

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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32 Grains of an English Coin

Posted on January 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Thirty-two grains of English wheat, taken from the middle of an ear of corn (so as to confound cheats and counterfeiters) was the official weight of an English silver penny according to the reforms of old King Offa of Mercia (757-796), undertaken in parallel with those of the Emperor Charlemagne in mainland Europe. Twenty of these pennies should weigh in at an ounce (to give the equal of the old Latin solidus coin of the Romans and the English shilling) and twelve such ounces produced the royally approved standard of a Tower Pound, worth 240 silver pennies. All of which said, in 1284 King Edward I switched the currency off the wheat standard back to the barley grain.”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

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Axiom

Posted on January 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Axiom (noun): A generally or universally accepted truth or incontestable principle; self-evident or fundamental proposition; verity. Adj. axiomatic; adv. axiomatically.

‘He recalled a slang axiom that never had any meaning in college days: ‘Don’t buck the system; you’re likely to gum the works.’ John  O’Hara, Appointment in Samarra”

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

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Word Root Exercise: Iso-

Posted on January 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the Greek word root iso-. It means equal and same. It’s at the root of a number of frequently used words in mathematics and the sciences; the two words I recognize from the list on this document (which were chosen, as the book from which they were drawn emphasizes, because of the frequency with which they appear on college admissions tests like the SAT) are isosceles and isotope.

Otherwise, as you will quickly perceive, the words on this worksheet are not high-frequency words in everyday discourse.

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 Normal Curve

Posted on January 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on the normal curve along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. If statistics are your bailiwick, I would appreciate a comment on whether or not you think this is a good general introduction to the subject. Even for an innumerate dolt (with, I concede, not much interest in the subject) like myself, this reading makes sense.

But what do you think?

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, 17 December 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Denominations of U.S. Coins from The Order of Things

Posted on December 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

The final Text for 2021 is a lesson plan on coin denomination in United States currency with its list as reading and comprehension questions. This material is adapted from The Order of Things, Barbara Ann Kipfer’s enviable reference book. This is relatively simple material, designed to aid students who struggle with the kind of reading and analytical skills that are presented by, for example, word problems in math.

Like most things on Mark’s Text Terminal, these documents are formatted in Microsoft Word, so you can alter them to suit the needs of your students.

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, 10 September 2021: A Lesson Plan on Lesson Plan on the Number of Characters Used in Writing Systems from The Order of Things

Posted on September 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the number of characters used in writing systems. Like all of the lessons and other materials under the heading of The Order of Things, this lesson and its list as reading and comprehension questions are adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s magisterial reference book of the same name.

Nota bene, please, that I adapted these materials to assist students who struggle to work with two symbolic systems–i.e., in this case, numbers and letters–at the same time. Needless to say, these documents can be adapted for your use; they are, like almost everything else here, in Microsoft Word. In other words, they are open source.

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, 20 August 2021: A Lesson Plan on Nations with the Shortest Coastlines from The Order of Things

Posted on August 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on nations with the shortest coastlines. Here is the list as reading with comprehension questions. As the title of this post indicates, this is another lesson adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s magisterial (I really want her job) reference book The Order of Things (New York: Random House, 1997).

Nota bene, please, that I wrote these materials (there are quite a few of them on this blog now, with more to come) with the needs of students who struggle with reading in mind, especially when two symbolic systems (letters and numbers) are at work in the same lesson. If you find this lesson useful in your classroom, you might find its companion, a lesson on nations with the longest coastlines, which I published last month, a complement to the documents in this post.

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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