Category Archives: English Language Arts

This category contains domain-specific material–reading and writing expository prose, interpreting literature etc.–designed to meet the Common Core standards in English language arts while at the same time being flexible enough to meet the needs of diverse and idiosyncratic learners.

Cultural Literacy: Gloria Steinem

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Gloria Steinem. This is a half-page worksheet with a long, compound, one-sentence reading and one comprehension question. A spare, and I do mean spare, introduction to this important 20th century figure.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Ella Wheeler Wilcox, who authored the famous, if insipid, saying “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone.” Her biography is quite rich, and she was apparently prolific.

This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. A spare, but effective, introduction to a poet who, I’ll hazard a guess, is largely forgotten–which arouses the question: is any poet remembered today?

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 Weekly Text, 7 March 2025, Women’s History Month Week I: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Harriet Tubman

OK, we’ve rounded to corner to March, during which Mark’s Text Terminal, conforming to the latest consensus, observes Women’s History Month. The first Weekly Text for this month is this reading on Harriet Tubman along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

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.

Langston Hughes: Excerpt from “Theme for English B”

“As I learn from you,

I guess you learn from me—

although you’re older—and

white

and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.”

Langston Hughes

Theme for English B l. 37″ (1951)

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Cultural Literacy: Lagos

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Lagos, which is, of course, the largest city in Nigeria and that nation’s capital until 1991, when the government moved the capital to Abuja, in the center of the country.

This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one very long compound sentence, separated by a semicolon, and a two-part comprehension questions on one line.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Harlem Renaissance

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Harlem Renaissance. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences (one of which, longish, presents a nice summary list of writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance) and three comprehension questions.

Once again, this is a short document that serves as a good general introduction to one of the most significant and consequential moments in 20th-century American cultural history.

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 Weekly Text, 28 February 2025, Black History Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Langston Hughes

For the final Friday of Black History Month 2025, the Weekly Text from Mark’s Text Terminal is this reading on Langston Hughes along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. These documents join a solid body of material by and about Langston Hughes on this blog.; to find others, just search his name on the home page.

And now we move on to Women’s History Month 2025 in March.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Joe Louis

OK, as long as we’re on the topic this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Joe Louis. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and three comprehension questions. This is a more basic introduction to the Brown Bomber than the post just below.

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 Weekly Text, 21 February 2025, Black History Month Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on 2Pac and Biggie

For the third week of Black History Month 2025 here is a reading on 2pac and Biggie along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

At this point, this blog is heavily stocked with materials excerpted and adapted from David S. Kidder and Noah Oppenheim’s series of books under the title of The Intellectual Devotional. There are five in all of these books: the first one, simply called The Intellectual Devotional, then one volume each (under the title The Intellectual Devotional) on American History, Biographies, Health, and Modern Culture. All of this is a long way of explaining that some readings repeat, with only slight variations, in more than one volume of this series; there is, ergo, another version of this material on this blog that I published back in 2018.

It goes without saying that in some places, this will particularly high-interest material. Thus, I have tagged it as such.

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.

Cultural Literacy: George Washington Carver

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on George Washington Carver. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. I had learned, I suppose in elementary school, to associate George Washington Carver with developing a plethora of uses for the peanut; as it happens, he did the same thing with the sweet potato.

All of this was done, interestingly, because Carver recognized the deleterious toll cotton production takes on the soil. This makes him, as his Wikipedia page observes, an early leader in environmentalism.

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.