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.

A Short Analysis and Argument Worksheet on Basketball Great Steph Curry

It’s a remote professional development day here in my district. As I sit here waiting to join an online meeting, I have a minute to post this short analysis and argumentation worksheet on Steph Curry. My colleague Jason Zanitsch and I put this together a couple of weeks ago. Don’t let this document’s brevity mislead you: it packs a punch in terms of the thought it requires from the students to whom it is assigned. That credit goes to Jason.

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.

Matsuo Basho Evokes Time, Place, and Season

“On a withered branch

A crow has settled—

Autumn nightfall.”

Matsuo Basho, Poem (translation by Harold G. Henderson)

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

Cultural Literacy: Sumatra

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Sumatra. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences–the second of them is a fairly long compound which might need editing for emergent or struggling readers.

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: Zen

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Zen. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three longish sentences and three comprehension questions. When you open this, I wonder if you’ll find, like I did, that things are a bit crammed together and crowded in this document. It may need some work–perhaps like turning it into a one-page affair.

Of course I would be interested in hearing what you think.

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, 31 May 2024, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month Week V: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Genghis Khan

OK! For the final Friday of Asian American Pacific Island Heritage Month Week, here is a reading on Genghis Khan with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I think it’s safe to assume that I need not belabor the importance of this conqueror and empire builder.

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: Taipei

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Taipei. It is, of course, the capital of Taiwan. This is half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions. Short and to the point, as the best of these documents tend to be.

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.

Akiko Yosano

“Akiko Yosano: (1878-1942) Japanese poet. Akiko’s first volume of tanka, Midaregami (1901; tr Tangled Hair, 1935), startled her contemporaries with its bold affirmation of female sexuality and exerted an immense influence on later poets who sought release from semifeudal morality as well as from conventional idioms of tanka. Akiko’s translation of Japanese classics, such as the Tale of Genji, into the modern vernacular were highly influential, as were her pioneering  and passionate essays on woman’s rights.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Cultural Literacy: Tajikistan

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Tajikistan. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences–and beware the first one, which is a doozy of a compound with with a series of geographical place names separated by commas. My guess? This will need to be modified for struggling and emergent readers.

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, 24 May 2024, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on al-Ghazali

This week’s Text, the fourth for Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2024, is a reading an Al-Ghazali (full name Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsiyy al-Ghazali– the diacritical marks are courtesy of a cool copy-and-paste from Wikipedia), the Persian Islamic theologian and polymath, along with its attendant 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.

Li Po Approaches Last Call

“Beneath the blossoms with a pot of wine,

No friends at hand, so I poured alone;

I raised my cup to invite the moon,

Turned to my shadow, and we became three.”

Li Po,“Drinking Alone in the Midnight” (eighth cent.) (translation by Elling Eide)

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