“Declared for Said. To a newspaper reporter no one ever seems to say anything; all ‘declare.’ Like ‘alleged’ (which see) the word is tiresome exceedingly.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
This week’s Text, following in sequence, is the eleventh lesson plan of the History of Hip-Hop unit, this one on the late, great, Gil Scott-Heron. This lesson begins with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the National Association for the the Advancement of Colored People. The center of this lesson is this adapted reading on Gil Scott-Heron with its comprehension worksheet to accompany it.
This lesson also includes listening to two of Gil Scott-Heron’s songs, both of which are available on YouTube. Here are the lyrics to “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “The Bottle.”
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.
“As our knowledge is converted to wisdom, the door to opportunity is locked.”
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
Here is a worksheet on the verb phrase can’t wait followed by an infinitive. I can’t wait to empty out the gerunds and infinitives folder.
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.
“Cliché (noun): An expression so overused as to be trite, such as a hackneyed idiom or dead metaphor; stereotyped, overworked idea; evident commonplace. Adjective: cliché, clichéd.
‘The language is a double-depressant of numbing, cliché-ridden prose that ranges from Lady Bountiful pitter-patter to tearoom philosophizing.’ Colman McCarthy, The Washington Post”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the sonnet as a poetic form, This is a half-page document with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions. A simple–even elegant, if I may say so–and symmetrical introduction to the structure of the sonnet and some of the poems who wrote in the form.
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.
“The publisher promises that anyone who has a deep love for the well-made English sentence will find these stories richly rewarding. Perhaps so. But there is every chance that the rest of us—those who prefer to curl up with a good book—will be left gasping with boredom instead.”
Book World
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
Moving along with the History of Hip-Hop unit, this week’s Text is the tenth lesson plan, on The Last Poets. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Malcolm X. From there we proceed to the mainstay of the lesson, this adapted reading on The Last Poets and its attendant comprehension-building worksheet.
Incidentally, if you’re interested in the full text from which the reading above was adapted, here is a PDF of the master of the reading. I snipped this from a copy of Uncut magazine back when the Hip-Hop fanzines were still published in paper and available at the Borders on Lower Broadway (very near Wall), near the school where I served at that time and where I would pick them up. So, we’re talking, basically, about pre-2008, which is when Borders ceased to exist, a casualty of the financial crisis that year. I had a hell of a time finding the citation, but I am relatively confident of 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, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, New York City, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets
Tagged black history, building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge, diction/grammar/style/usage, music, poetry, professional development, questioning/inquiry, readings/research, united states history
“There are some things only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of social sciences. This is a half-page document with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. It is the sparest of introductions to the concept, but still manages to cover the necessities of defining something that can be broad and perhaps a bit too flexibly abstract in meaning.
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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