“Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion
OK, because I’m not working at the moment, I have had some time–in addition to working at publishing 30-50 posts a week on this blog–to think about writing new material that parents, students, and teachers working at a digital distance from their students could profitably use during this public health crisis. After a week or so of unemployment, I started to realize that the 2020 Census of the United States presented a perfect teachable moment; there are a lot of big social studies concepts at work during the census. Moreover, as I started to think through the lesson plan, I realized that I could write something big, in the sense that it would contain a lot of documents, but also flexible, in sense that parents and teachers could expand or contract it as their children, students, and circumstances require. Now that I’ve said that, let me point out that every document in this post is in Microsoft Word, so they are flexible and adaptable to help you best respond to the needs of the kids in front of you.
Now, about a month after starting work on this, it is time to publish it. As I am wont to do, I have allowed the perfect to become the enemy of the good here. I know that new ideas and therefore new questions for this lesson plan will continue to occur to me. Better to get this out than wait to get every last detail into these documents. In any case, I am confident those same thoughts will occur to users of this material; that said, if you have any questions about it, please leave a comment.
So, here is a lesson plan on using the 2020 United States census as a teachable moment. I’ve worked on this document for some time, but like most lesson plans, it may never be either completely coherent, or, indeed, complete. But for the moment, I think it’s sound.
In my classrooms, I always begin every lesson with a short exercise that I learned, while teaching in New York City, to call a “do-now.” I’ve assembled a large number of do-now worksheets for this lesson, all of them adapted from The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002) by E.D. Hirsch et al. For this lesson, the four most salient are–in order of relevance, I think–E Pluribus Unum, the Latin for “out of many, one.” The census, if nothing else, is an exercise in affirming that out of many places, one; as we’ve learned during the COVID19 crisis, we really are in this all together. One important dimension of the census is determining population figures for apportionment of congressional reputation. This worksheet on the Lockean concept of consent of the governed strikes me as especially important to understand in the context of the census. Given the role the census plays in our democratic elections, this worksheet on equal protection of law is undeniably germane here. In reiterating that we are all in this together, whether in stopping the spread of coronavirus or participating in civic processes like the census, this short exercise on the concept of esprit de corps also strikes me as pertinent to this lesson.
Should you need more Cultural Literacy worksheets for this lesson, or just in general, here, in basic list form, are the rest of the documents I selected as relevant to varying degrees to this lesson, to with these Cultural Literacy worksheets on: absolute monarchy; aristocracy; class; class consciousness; class structure; constitutional convention; faction; incumbent; individualism; meritocracy; nepotism; power elite; Roosevelt’s scheme to pack the Supreme Court, and vested interest. This selection ranges from quite relevant (faction, vested interest) to marginally relevant (class, class consciousness, etc.). If you need guidance on how to use these in the context of the larger lesson, drop a comment and I’ll see if I can help you make the connection and you can help your child or student understand that connection more clearly.
The census, structurally and in terms of the work performing it, is a large scale exercise in demography. That’s a word that means “the statistical study of human populations esp. with reference to size and density, distribution, and vital statistics” (Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition (Kindle Locations 118895-118896). Merriam-Webster, Inc.. Kindle Edition). That study always concludes in the issuance of a report. Demography is writing about people. Here are two word root worksheets that call upon students, in the context for this lesson, to perform a synthesis. The first is on the Greek roots demo and demi, which mean people; the second is on the Latin roots graph and graphy, which mean writing, written, recording, drawing, and science. If students complete these two worksheets, a simple question should suffice to assess understanding: “Now that you know what these word roots mean, what do you suppose demography is?” In fact, as you’ll see if you use these materials, that is the first question on the worksheet.
Finally, here is the reading and comprehension worksheet for this lesson. Now that I have that finished and posted, I do want to comment on the fact of gerrymandering, and how it might be used to extend this lesson a bit further–and raise students’ critical awareness of that current problem in our electoral system. To that end, here is a supplemental list of critical questions on gerrymandering to round out this lesson.
That’s it.
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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, Social Sciences, Worksheets
Tagged argumentation, building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge, cultural literacy, diction/grammar/style/usage, foreign languages/linguistics, philosophy/religion, professional development, questioning/inquiry, united states history, word roots
“Summary
Implications
Discussion Questions
Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel T. The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.
When I was in middle school, one of the classes we took was called “Home Economics.” It was a practical knowledge course on how to shop and cook for oneself. I can’t imagine how my life in this pandemic would have proceeded without the knowledge I took from that course.
This reading on enriched foods and its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet are the kind of thing we would have learned about in Home Ec, as it was known. I didn’t understand the point of the class at the time, so I apologize to the universe in general and the teachers of the course in particular for my uninterest and generally bad behavior that semester.
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.
“Effective: Indicating (with a verb) the final stage or point or the result of an action.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage
This is the second lesson plan on the use of modal and conditional verbs that I’ve posted in the last week. I wrote two of these in order to break up the forms of these verbs and to help students build their understanding of them through extensive practice in their use.
I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the subjunctive mood of verbs. The subjunctive is a challenging area of usage, and I probably need to take a look at both of these lessons on modals and conditionals to make sure the use of the subjunctive is clear. If this lesson goes into a second day, here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on Ida B. Wells, the great journalist (and don’t forget that if you and your students like Everyday Edit worksheets, the generous people at Education World give away a yearlong supply of them at their website).
This scaffolded worksheet and its accompanying learning support are the central work of this lesson. While the support contains material specific to this lesson, if you remove that from the bottom of the document, and change the header, you will have a learning support on modal verbs that can be used more broadly than the confines of this lesson. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the worksheet to make delivering this lesson a bit easier.
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.
“agitprop Agitation propaganda, a theatrical device employed by the left-wing in Europe and the USA during the 1950s; in the 1960s it developed into what is now termed ‘street theater.’ Its purpose was to convey a political message, or political education, by seeking to interest and entertain.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the bourgeoisie for all you social studies teachers out there. I found, when I taught global studies classes, that this abstract concept was somewhat difficult for students to grasp.
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.
[If you want a copy of this text as learning support in Microsoft Word you’ll find it under that hyperlink.]
“Use the active voice.
The active voice is always more direct and vigorous than the passive:
I shall always remember my first visit to Boston.
This is much better than
My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me.
The latter sentence is less direct, less bold, and less concise. If the writer tries to make it more concise by omitting “by me,”
My first visit to Boston will always be remembered,
it becomes indefinite: is it the writer or some undisclosed person or the world at large that will always remember this visit?
This rule does not, of course, meant that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary.
The dramatists of the Restoration are little esteemed today.
Modern readers have little esteem for the dramatists of the restoration.
The first would be the preferred form in a paragraph on the dramatists of the restoration, the second in a paragraph on the tastes of modern readers. The need to make a particular word the subject of the sentence will often, as in these examples, determine which voice is to be used.
The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative concerned principally with action, but in writing of any kind. Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is or could be heard.
There were a great deal of dead leaves lying on the ground.
Dead leaves covered the ground.
At dawn the crowing of a rooster could be heard.
The cock’s crow came with dawn.
The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired.
Failing health compelled him to leave college.
It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she had.
She soon repented her words.
Note, in the examples above, that when a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is the by-product of vigor.”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
At week’s end, here are two context clues worksheets on the adjective eloquent and the noun eloquence. These are commonly used words in educated discourse, so our students probably ought to know them.
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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