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.

Alice Childress

“Alice Childress: (1917-1994) American novelist, playwright, and actress. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Childress was well aware of racism and used her writing as an attempt to change social conditions. Childress joined the American Negro Theater as a young woman and became a prolific playwright. In the 1950s, she wrote Trouble in Mind, one of the first plays with black themes to be produced, and was a peer of such notable black writers as Richard Wright and Lorraine Hansberry. Other notable plays by Childress include Florence, Gold Through the Trees, and Wedding Band (collected, 1971), which was produced at the New York Shakespeare Festival and later broadcast on television. Childress’s novels include When the Rattlesnake Sounds (1975), Rainbow Jordan (1882), and Those Other People (1989). She is best known for the young adult novel A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich (1973), a blistering account of black urban life.”

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

Cultural Literacy: Native Son

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Richard Wright’s novel Native Son. This is a half-page document with a one-sentence reading and one comprehension question. A tiny document, of limited utility, I suppose–unless you are teaching the novel and need something to use as a do-now to settle the class after a change of periods. If that.

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: Ivory Coast

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Ivory coast, or as it is more properly known, as part of the Francophone world, Cote d’Ivoire. This is a full-page document with a reading of five sentences and nine comprehension questions. It’s mostly an introduction to the geography of the area of West Africa in which Cote d’Ivoire is situated.

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.

Ousmane Sembene

Ousmane Sembene: (1923-2007) Senegalese writer and film director. He fought with the Free French in World War II. After the war, he worked as a docker and taught himself French. His writings, often on historical-political themes, include The Black Docker (1965), God’s Bits of Wood (1960), and Niiwam and Taaw (1987). Around 1960 he became interested in film; since studying in Moscow, he has made films reflecting a strong social commitment, including Black Girl (1966), the first feature produced in sub-Saharan Africa. With Mandabi (1968), he began to film in the Wolof language; his later films have included Xala (1974), Ceddo (1977), Camp de Thiaroye (1987), and Guelwaar (1994).

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

The Weekly Text, 17 February 2023, Black History Month 2023 Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Niagara Movement

This week’s Text, in observation of Black History Month 2023, is a reading on the Niagara Movement with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Did you know that the Niagara Movement, organized by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter, was the precursor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People–i.e. the NAACP?

I hadn’t, until I read the document presented here.

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: Sojourner Truth

Moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Sojourner Truth. This is a half-page document with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. A spare but potentially useful introduction to Isabella Baumfree.

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: Reconstruction

Have you ever read C. Vann Woodward’s monograph The Strange Career of Jim Crow? Martin Luther King, Jr. characterized it as “the historical Bible of the civil rights movement.” Woodward marks the end of Reconstruction as the beginning of Jim Crow, a thesis that I believe remains for many if not most professional historians the final word on the subject.

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on Reconstruction, a two-page document with a reading of nine sentences (including a doozie of a compound in right in the middle of the paragraph) and 12 comprehension questions, covers a lot of ground. Still, if you really want students to understand how local peckerwoods in the South seized power and used it to oppress Americans of African descent for the next eighty years, you’ll need to go to Woodward’s book, or one like it by one of his epigones.

In any event, this document, like just about everything you’ll find on this website, is formatted in Microsoft Word. In other words, you can alter this document to suit your students’ needs.

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, 10 February 2023, Black History Month 2023 Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the 54th Massachusetts Infantry

On this, the second week of Black History Month 2023, Mark’s Text Terminal presents this reading on the 54th Massachusetts Infantry and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The 54th Massachusetts is the regiment made famous by the film Glory. If you live in Boston, and frequent that city’s Common, then you know The Shaw Monument, which passively honors the heroes of the 54th Massachusetts with this memorial to the regiment’s abolitionist, Boston Brahmin commander, Robert Gould Shaw (whom I learned recently was an ancestor to the revered American poet Robert Lowell).

In any event, we should remember the 54th Massachusetts for its heroic, selfless actions at the Second Battle of Fort Wagner (depicted well in Glory) on 18 July 1863. We should also remember William Harvey Carney for his heroism in that encounter, and for his status as the first Black soldier to win his greatly deserved Medal of Honor.

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: Kenya

The country has interested me since I studied it at Hampshire College in Frank Holmquist’s course “Grassroots Perspectives on Third World Development,” so I can say with some confidence that this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Kenya, a full-page document with a reading of three sentences and six comprehension questions, is the sparest of introductions to this diverse nation and its rich history. If you’re thinking you’d like to conduct an inquiry into, say, the British Royal Family’s involvement in the suppression of the Mau-Mau uprising, you’ll need to dig a little deeper.

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: Busing

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on busing is a full-page document with a reading of three sentences and five comprehension questions. I’m old enough to remember this period, and remember well seeing the shameful and violent behavior on nightly network newscasts, particularly of white Bostonians, directed toward children being bused. This was an ugly moment that recent history reminds us, alas, has not yet passed.

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.