Tag Archives: questioning/inquiry

The Weekly Text, September 2, 2016: A Lesson Plan on Mercantilism

Posted on September 2, 2016 | 1 comment

Here in New York City we return to school on Tuesday, September 6th, so this is the final weekend of the summer break. It went fast, as it always does. I’ll now return to post The Weekly Text every Friday morning. To begin the year, here is a a lesson plan on mercantilism. In my school, mercantilism is a topic that repeats in a variety of courses and is therefore an essential concept for understanding trade policy and legislation, causes of conflict, and one of the motives for the American Revolution, among other things. Unlike other complete lesson plans I’ve posted thus far on Mark’s Text Terminal, this one is a stand-alone, special topic lesson, i.e. not part of a larger unit plan. Therefore, you’ll find it aligned to four Common Core Standards in the lesson plan document itself.

A reading of this length and the reading comprehension worksheet that accompanies it, depending on where we are in the school year, can take up to three days to complete in my classroom–which I use to assess students’ capacity to retain and apply information over the short term. For that reason, I include with this lesson three context clues worksheets on commodity, barrier, and tariff. These are the short, do-now worksheets I use to ease transitions between periods at the beginning of class to help students settle themselves (not to mention assisting them in developing their own understanding of inferring meanings of words from context, and building abstract academic vocabularies). Obviously, these are three key vocabulary words related to mercantilism; the latter two, barrier and tariff, are the two leading instruments of trade policy in mercantilist systems, and therefore essential to an understanding of them.

Finally, for the mainstay of the lesson, here are an Intellectual Devotional reading on mercantilism and a reading comprehension worksheet to accompany the reading on mercantilism. These are self-explanatory, so I’ll resist the temptation to gas on about them. If you seek guidance in using any of these materials, you might want to check out some of the users’ manuals in the About Weekly Texts link (that one is live, too) on the homepage of Mark’s Text Terminal, just above the banner photograph.

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 12, 2016: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Black Death

Posted on August 12, 2016 | 1 comment

A couple of months ago I posted a short piece on the the Intellectual Devotional series of books. I believe these books have great potential for use in middle and high school classrooms; I’ve used them repeatedly and successfully with struggling readers and learners in my own high school classroom, as well as handing them out for independent makeup to students who have fallen behind.

During the 2016-2017 school year I plan as part of my personal professional development to take a longer and more analytical look at these documents with an eye toward either incorporating some of them into existing unit plans, or developing new lessons or units around them. In the process of this endeavor, which to a limited extent is already underway, I’ll convert these readings from PDFs (I scanned them directly from the pages of the books) to Word documents. Once they are in a manipulable form I can edit and adjust them for students’ reading levels. It’s worth mentioning that the authors of these books, Noah Oppenheim and David S. Kidder, are excellent compilers and editors. If you find yourself editing their writing for your students, I strongly recommend conforming to their original outline in your edits. These are some of the most well-outlined readings I’ve ever seen.

When I posted my original exposition of the five Intellectual Devotional volumes, I wrote the authors in search of their permission to post an occasional article from their books. I never heard back. I’m going to stick my neck out, and for this week’s text here is an Intellectual Devotional reading on the Black Death in Word format, so you can edit it, change the typeface, or whatever else best suits the students you serve. In addition, here is a reading comprehension worksheet to accompany the Black Death reading above. Eventually, I’ll incorporate these two documents into a lesson on writing essays for high-stakes exams. I’ll very likely end up posting that here 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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The Weekly Text, July 1, 2016: A Trove of Documents for Conducting a Professional Development Inquiry into Executive Skills

Posted on July 1, 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; first up is the proposal for this inquiry group, and a learning support for teachers; 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.

Addendum, July 27, 2016: Here is the scoring criteria for the surveys that this professional development asks students to complete.

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 Intellectual Devotional Series

Posted on June 6, 2016 | 2 comments

Several years ago, while I was engaged with my final go-around with the Book of the Month Club, I took a chance on a title that sounded interesting: The Intellectual Devotional Modern Culture. The book’s title is about as exact a description of its contents as I’ve ever seen. First, it contains daily devotionals, just like the religious books that serve as part of its namesake, for each of the 365 days of the year; second, each entry–which I should mention are stylishly written and cogently edited–addressed a topic in modern culture.

Reading its daily entries, it didn’t take me long to understand that these readings, particularly those on athletes and pop music stars, would serve well as reading work for the struggling and alienated learners in my classroom. I broke the spine of the book and began separating pages to scan into my computer and save for future use. At the same time, I started writing reading comprehension worksheets to accompany these readings.

Moreover, I soon discovered that the authors of my book, David S. Kidder and Noah Oppenheim had in fact published a series of five Intellectual Devotional books. It didn’t take me long to buy the rest of the series and begin developing curricular materials from them keyed to various topics in the high school course of study. At this point, I have several hundred readings and worksheets that I’ve developed from these excellent books.

I recently wrote the authors of these books to seek permission to post some of their readings on Mark’s Text Terminal–particularly those I have rendered in typescript, so that teachers who work with struggling readers might edit them for those students. I have yet to hear back from them, but hope springs eternal, I guess. The good news is that all five books remain in print in durable hardcover editions. You can order them from your preferred bookseller (which I hope is local and independent, if I may presume to say so).

From time to time, outside The Weekly Text, I’ll publish here my worksheets to accompany the readings in The Intellectual Devotional books. To that end, here’s a reading comprehension worksheet on Michelangelo from the book I call, for file-coding purposes, The Intellectual Devotional Basic, so called because it has no subtitle, and is simply called The Intellectual Devotional (the subtitles for the other four books are the aforementioned Modern Culture, as well as Health, Biographies, and American History).

As always, I hope you find this useful. If you do, I’d like to hear how these kinds of readings and worksheet work in your classroom, particularly if you adapt them for struggling or alienated learners.

Post Scriptum: Here is the reading that accompanies this worksheet on Michelangelo, which I posted at a user’s request in October of 2017.

Addendum: I’ve posted these in the About Posts & Texts page, but I want to put them here as well. As I mentioned, there are five volumes of The Intellectual Devotional series and I’ve prepared reading and worksheet templates in Microsoft Word (so you can alter them to your needs) for all five books. So, here are the templates: The first set is from the general book (which I have called, for my purposes of file management, “Basic”), simply titled The Intellectual Devotional.  Here are templates for preparing materials from the American History volume. Next up is the set of four templates work with the Biographies volume. Here are the four templates for the Health volume. For the Modern Culture volume (the first of these I bought, incidentally, and a book full of high-interest material that I recognized had great potential for designing short reading and comprehension exercises for struggling learners, especially those with short attention spans), here are yet another four templates for readings and worksheets. Finally, here is the bibliography of all five titles for copying and pasting citations, or whatever else you might need it to do.

 

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The Weekly Text, April 1, 2016: A Lesson Plan on Alain Resnais’ Holocaust Documentary “Night and Fog”

Posted on April 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

Some years ago, I began working to build a unit that guided struggling learners through the process of writing a synthetic research paper. I knew it would have to be highly structured into a scaffold form, and would need to guide students through the process of postulating an argument, researching and reading, evaluating evidence, outlining, and citing sources in Modern Language Association style. Since our sophomore research paper topic at the time was the Holocaust, I designed my highly structured research paper unit around that dismal period of European history.

I’ve actually floated a book proposal to a small educational publisher for this unit; they passed, which persuaded me the unit requires more work before it’s publishable. Since then,  I’ve worked on refining this sprawling unit.

Do you know Alain Renais’ documentary on the Holocaust, Night and Fog? I first saw it as a student at Ray F. Sennett Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, and it shocked me; indeed, it was one of those educational “before and after” (like reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X or Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown) moments for me. Early on in planning this unit, I knew this film–which packs an amazing amount of information (and a number of shocking images) into its 32 minute running time–would serve as the opening lesson.

Here then is a complete lesson to attend a viewing of Night and Fog.

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, February 26, 2016, Black History Month Week III: Documents on Melvin B. Tolson and His Involvement with the Communist Party

Posted on February 26, 2016 | Leave a comment

One of the subtexts in The Great Debaters is Melvin B. Tolson’s political organizing, specifically his commitment to helping African American sharecroppers and workers achieve something like social and economic equity in the Jim Crow South. In the film, Mr. Tolson (again, Denzel Washington plays him) is seen meeting with African American farmers, which is soon broken up by the KKK. The redneck sheriff, played with drawling, ignorant, aplomb by John Heard, holds Mr. Tolson’s political and social activism over his head, and the viewer understands that Melvin B. Tolson is probably a communist.

Anyone who had read the novel Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison or, more specific and literal to the subject, Richard Wright’s memoir Black Boy, has some background knowledge on the relationship between African Americans and the Communist Party, particularly in the 1930s.

Here, in the last of three Weekly Texts for Black History Month, is a reading on the allure of the Communist Party USA for African Americans, particularly in the 1930s. I understand that in certain school districts, this reading may well be forbidden fruit. That being so does not, I think, diminish the importance of understanding this part of our American past. I would think for educators teaching units on either Invisible Man or Black Boy. this reading would be de rigueur.

And that’s what I have to offer for Black History Month, 2016. As always, if you used any of this material, I hope you found it helpful; I would, again, as always, be grateful to hear from you about what worked or didn’t in your use of these readings.

Until next week….

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, February 12, 2016, Black History Month Week II: Two Readings on Melvin B. Tolson and James L. Farmer Jr.

Posted on February 12, 2016 | Leave a comment

The Weekly Text for this week follows last week’s on readings related to Denzel Washington’s film The Great Debaters. This is the second of three entries on this unit; because I will not post a Weekly Text for February 19th (we have President’s Day Week off for a mid-winter break), I’ll post two readings here this week.

The first is a reading on Melvin B. Tolson, the peripatetic (although he was associated with Wiley College and other post-secondary institutions in the Southwestern United States, he went to Columbia to pursue a graduate degree in 1930-31, was present at the end of the Harlem Renaissance, and counted Langston Hughes among his close friends) poet and political organizer who coached the legendary Wiley Debate Team of 1935.

Following the article on Mr. Tolson, there is a reading on one of his mentees, the legendary civil rights activist, James L. Farmer, Jr. Mr. Farmer’s list of accomplishments is substantial. He was a great American whose efforts made this nation a more just and decent place.

If these are useful to you, I’d be much obliged if you’d leave a comment explaining how or why.

Until February 26th….

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, February 5, 2016, Black History Month Week I: A Reading on Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Posted on February 5, 2016 | Leave a comment

February is Black History Month. Initiated by Carter G. Woodson in 1926, Black History Month is justly a staple in school curricula in the United States. Far, far be it from me to second-guess Dr. Woodson or any of the proponents of Black History Month, but I have never been entirely at ease with the concept of one month of the year set aside for the study of the myriad and vital contributions Americans of African descent have made to our nation, because I think it is insufficient. It seems to me, when studying the history of the United States from the colonial period to yesterday, every month ought to be Black History Month. African Americans are an integral part of the history of the United States, and the U.S. History curriculum really ought to reflect that.

At the same time, I appreciate the opportunity to teach material that isn’t part of the standard curriculum. For the next four weeks, I’ll post reading assignments from a unit I developed to attend the film The Great Debaters, directed by and starring Denzel Washington. After watching the movie for the first time, it struck me that it would serve nicely as the foundation of a unit on both Black History and using prior knowledge to understand new material. I outlined a unit plan, fleshed it out, and began using it to great success. I’ve yet to present it to a class that wasn’t immediately interested in and engaged by the material–it has been that successful with the students I serve. The fundamental educative goal for this unit is to provide students with prior knowledge of the personalities and events–to wit, the 1935 Wiley College Debate Team led by Melvin B. Tolson–by way of reading comprehension worksheets and discussion in class. The first five lessons of the unit work to prepare students for a viewing of the film.

So, here, in the first of three Weekly Texts on The Great Debaters, is the first reading from the unit, on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

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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