Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a sect. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions. A simple but effective introduction to a concept students really ought to understand before they graduate high school.
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.
Here is a worksheet on the verb pay when followed by an object and an infinitive.
You’ll need to pay him to clean your garage.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on science fiction. This is a half-page document with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. A concise, symmetrical introduction to this literary genre.
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.
“Deadwood (noun): Useless or expendable words that add nothing to clarity or meaning; verbiage; redundancy. See also VERBALISM.
‘Overly specific’ is inferior to “over specific,” as “inside of her” is to “inside her”; deadwood is always undesirable. John Simon. Paradigms Lost'”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Greek word roots gen/o, -gene, and -genesis. These, as you have probably inferred, carry several meanings: “production,” “formation,” “generation,” “origin,” “cause,” “birth,” “kind,” and “race.” These roots grow into such high-frequency English words as carcinogen, congenital, and genocide, all of which are included in this scaffolded worksheet.
I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the adjective prenatal, which I hoped, perhaps vainly and foolishly, would point the way toward the meanings of these word roots.
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.
“Jorge Amado: (1912-2001) Brazilian novelist. Born and reared on a cacao plantation, he published his first novel at 20. His early works, including The Violent Land (1942), explore the exploitation of suffering of plantation workers. Despite imprisonment and exile for leftist activities, he continued to produce novels, many of which have been banned in Brazil and Portugal. Later works such as Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon (1958), Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (1966), and The War of the Saints (1993) preserve Amado’s political attitude in their more subtle satire.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazabal: (1945-) Colombian writer and political figure. Growing up during La Violencia, the civil strife that took over 300,000 lives between 1946 and 1959, he developed a black sense of humor. His early novel, Condores no entierran todos los dias (1971) is the riveting story of a conservative who becomes a death squad leader. El bazar de los idiotas (1974; tr. Bazaar of the Idiots, 1991), a vicious satire on intolerance and religious gullibility, is one of Colombia’s most read novels. Pepe Botellas (1984) is a hilarious political fable about a Cuban exile who tries to become President of Colombia. Alvarez Gardeazabal’s recent fiction has dealt with the corrosive effects of the drug trade on Colombian society.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“Octavio Paz: (1914-1998) Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat. Educated at the University of Mexico, Paz published his first book of poetry, Luna Silvestre (“Savage Moon”) in 1933. He later founded and edited several important literary reviews. Influenced in turn by Marxism, surrealism, existentialism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, his poetry uses rich imagery in dealing with metaphysical questions, and his most prominent theme is the human ability to overcome existential solitude through erotic love and artistic creativity. His prose works include The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950), an influential essay on Mexican history and culture. He was Mexico’s ambassador to India 1962-68. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1990.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Spanish-American War. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of seven sentences (the sixth of which is a long compound, and probably ought to be edited into smaller pieces for emergent and struggling readers) and seven comprehension questions. As usual, the editors of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy do an admirable job of condensing complicated events into a cogent snippet of text.
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.
“Cesar Davila Andrade: (1918-1967) Ecuadorian poet, short-story writer, and essayist. Davila Andrade published eight books of verse and two collections of short stories before committing suicide in a hotel in Caracas, Venezuela, a victim of prolonged depressions and alcoholism. While his work is known mainly in Ecuador and Venezuela, he was most often compared to Neruda and Vallejo. Of most influence as a poet, he carried certain key obsessions—evil in the form of sickness, passion, or death; sex as annihilation, and love as the absolute ideal—through several poetic incarnations. He began in the tradition of love poetry, as seen in Cancion a Teresita (1946). The second phase, which includes Arco de instantes (1959) and Boletin y elegia de las Mitas (1967), is dedicated to poetic experimentation and the geography and people of his American continent. The final period is complex, personal, and hermetic, best characterized by Conexiones de tierra (1964), which often voices his views of life, literature, and aesthetics. A lover of both the mystical and prosaic, he perhaps never managed a successful reconciliation of these twin currents in either his poetry or his life.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
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