“Museum without Walls: Phrase describing the illustrations and reproductions that today make works of art widely available. Introduced by Andre Malraux in his book The Voices of Silence, 1954.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
OK, moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on parody. This is a half-page worksheet with a one-sentence reading and one comprehension question. A spare, useful definition of this literary concept–and a word that might appear in reviews of a great deal of comedy.
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.
“student study team: A team of educators, convened at the request of classroom teacher, parent, or counselor, that designs in-class intervention techniques to discuss the needs of a particular student. The team may consist of the primary teacher; the parent or guardian of the student; two specialists (for example, in speech therapy, psychology, or counseling); a teacher who does not teach the student in any class; and the principal. Six weeks after implementing a program for the student, the team reconvenes to determine whether further steps, including a transfer to special education classes, are necessary.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the narrator in storytelling. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. This is a relatively straightforward exercise, but I can’t help wonder if it doesn’t offer a possibility for instantiation: What is a movie, TV show, or story that you like? Who is the narrator?
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.
“Jason * Orpheus (the lyre-playing musician) * Mopsus the seer * Heracles and his male love of the moment, the handsome young Hylas (who gets kidnapped by water nymphs) * Pollux the champion boxer who kills the king of the Bebyrycians * Shape-shifting Periclymenus * Fast-footed Euphemus * Winged Calais and Zetes (sons of the North Wind who repel the Harpies) * and 40 more
The Argo, which had a magical keel crafted out of a sacred oak from the oracle of Dodona, was crewed by fifty heroes of ancient Greece—the Argonauts. Jason was the leader of this warrior band (sometimes referred to as the ‘Minyans’) sent on what was presumed to be a suicidal quest by King Pelias, his usurping half-uncle. Their mission was to sail to Colchis (Georgia) and seize possession of the Golden Fleece of a divine ram what hung from a tree in a grove sacred to Ares, god of war, guarded by a sleepless dragon.
Every city in Greece liked to imagine that they contributed a hero to this mythical band, which means that the list has had to grow in number, though if you examine the text of Apollonius of Rhodes, written in third-century Alexandria, it is easy enough to identify all the named Argonauts. Even this cast, however, numbers fifty-five, though by juggling who comes on, as others go off, the good ship Argo, it is just about possible to keep to fifty.
If you add other famous names and such ubiquitous heroes such as Bellerophon, Nestor, Perseus, Atalanta, and Theseus, you can grow the crew to eighty, which has a hidden harmony with the text of Apollonius, who has embedded eighty aitia in his epic. These are short verse sequences which give the mythical origins or such curious things as the sacred water-carrying race held on the island of Aegina or how the island of Thira is linked with Libya. The final text comprise 6,000 lines, which can be recited in one day to reasonably alert ancient theater audience.”
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.
This week’s Text, as you probably expected if you are a regular user of this blog, is the fifth lesson plan of a seven-lesson unit on writing reviews. This lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the fine arts. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one simple sentence and two comprehension questions. As this lesson is a brainstorming activity, this reading as worksheet is designed to get students thinking about what they will include in their review, and how they would go about 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.
“authoritarianism: A style of government in which the rulers demand unquestioning obedience from the ruled. Traditionally, ‘authoritarians’ have argued for a high degree of determination by governments of belief and behavior and correspondingly smaller significance for individual choice. But it is possible to be authoritarian in some spheres while being more liberal in others. Frederick the Great is alleged to have said, ‘I have an agreement with my people: they can say what they like and I can do what I like.’
Authoritarianism has become simply a ‘boo’ word, referring to overweening and intolerant government irrespective of the justification, or lack of it, of such practices. Thus is often means exactly the same as despotism, an older word. A number of American political scientists in the Cold War period distinguished between ‘authoritarian‘ and ‘totalitarian‘ governments. The former (mainly military regimes) had two advantages over the latter: they did not last as long and though they would repress their political opponents as brutally as any known regimes, they left a larger sphere for private life. (Totalitarian regimes were, in this context, invariably communist.) Thus, where conditions were not yet ripe for democracy, there were relative advantages to authoritarianism.”
Excerpted from: McLean, Iain, and Alistair McMillan, editors. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
“…a copyeditor’s despair, a propounder of endless riddles.”
Atlantic Monthly
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on narration. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one sentence and one comprehension question. A very basic introduction to the concept of narration here, but useful here nonetheless, I submit.
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.
“Epigram (noun): A wise, cleverly expressed saying, often with a memorably inverted or satiric twist; witty observation. Adjective: epigrammatic, epigrammatical; adverb: epigrammatically; noun: epigrammatism.
‘The classic epigram is not a mosquito bite, which smarts awhile and goes away; it is a bee sting with the stinger left in, and it smarts forever.’ Willard Espy, An Almanac of Words at Play”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
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