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.

The Weekly Text, Friday 30 December 2022: History of Hip-Hop Lesson 4, The Griot in African Culture

Posted on December 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

Moving right along with this big unit on Hip-Hop, here is the fourth lesson plan, on the West African griot tradition (which should not be confused with the Haitian dish of the same name). This is a key lesson in this process. I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun griot.

Because this lesson includes a viewing of the video for the song, here are lyrics to the Afropop song “Shaking the Tree,” a collaboration between British rock star Peter Gabriel and the Senegalese griot (he descends from a family of griots) Youssou N’Dour. Finally, at the center of this lesson is this reading and comprehension worksheet, which is also meant to spur discussion, on the griot tradition in Africa.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

Tagged , , , , , ,

Mark Twain on the Classics

Posted on December 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

“A classic is something everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

Mark Twain

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes

Tagged ,

byzantine (adj)

Posted on December 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

You noted, I expect, that the header for this post contains what is generally used as a substantive and in that role is capitalized. Byzantine, of course, means, variously, “of, relating to, or characteristic of the ancient city of Byzantium,”  “of, relating to, or having the characteristics of a style of architecture developed in the Byzantine Empire especially in the fifth and sixth centuries featuring the dome carried on pendentives over a square and incrustation with marble veneering and with colored mosaics on grounds of gold,” and “of or relating to the churches using a traditional Greek rite and subject to Eastern canon law.”

What we have in the context clues worksheet on the adjective byzantine with a lower-case b, is a run-of-the-mill modifier. Used this way, the word means “of, relating to, or characterized by a devious and usually surreptitious manner of operation <a ~ power struggle>,” “intricately involved,” and “labyrinthine <rules of ~ complexity>.” I tend to use this word as synonym for complex and complicated. It’s a tricky word, polysemous and altering between proper and common status. It shows up enough in academic prose, I would argue, that students probably ought to learn it.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Worksheets

Tagged , , , ,

Book of Answers: The Glass Menagerie

Posted on December 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

On what work did Tennessee Williams base The Glass Menagerie (1944)? The Broadway play was drawn from a screenplay called The Gentleman Caller, which Williams wrote while he was under contract as a screenwriter for MGM in the early 1940s.

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference

Tagged ,

Cultural Literacy: Old Boy Network

Posted on December 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

OK, here’s another document I prepared for my sociology course, to wit, a Cultural Literacy on the concept of the old boy network. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one long compound sentence with a colon in the middle of it, and two comprehension questions. Just the basics, but it gets the job done of introducing the concept. Students may need case studies to apply this knowledge, of course.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , , ,

The Weekly Text, Friday 23 December 2022: History of Hip-Hop Lesson 3, The Medieval Troubadour

Posted on December 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

If there is a lesson that can be omitted from this unit–and I realized this the minute I began its preparation–it is this third lesson, on the Medieval Troubadours. Yes they are part of the global oral tradition, but in a highly peculiar way. For instance, they used the Occitan language, which is now endangered. Their songs were born of the chivalric tradition and celebrate courtly love. This is a long way of saying that this material may not be of surpassing interest to teenagers.

In any event, I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a capella singing. Here is the reading and questions on the troubadours themselves, which is the principal work of this lesson.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

Tagged , , , , , ,

Common English Verbs Followed by an Infinitive: Agree

Posted on December 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the verb agree as it is used with gerund. I would happily agree to avoid wasting my time preparing subpar curricular materials.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Worksheets

Tagged ,

Cultural Literacy: Lyric

Posted on December 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the lyric as a form in poetry–and by extension, then, lyrics in music. This is a half-page document with a reading of three short sentences followed by three comprehension questions. A short, symmetrical introduction to the lyric form and nothing more.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Worksheets

Tagged , , , ,

The Doubter’s Companion: A Big Mac

Posted on December 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

“A Big Mac: The communion wafer of consumption. Not really food but the promise of food. Whatever it tastes like, whatever it is made of, once it touches lips A Big Mac is transubstantiated into the mythological hamburger.

It is, along with Perrier, one of the sacred objects of the leading philosophical school of the late-twentieth century public relations. Cynics often unjustly suggest that this school favors superficial appearances over content. Had this been the case, PR would have failed. Most people, after all, can easily recognize the difference between appearances and reality.

A Big Mac, for example, is not big. It doesn’t taste of much. It isn’t good for you. And it seems sweet. Why does it seem sweet if, as the company says, it isn’t laced with sugar?

What the philosophy of PR proposes is theoretical content (such as sex appeal, fun, individualism, sophistication, the rejection of sophistication) in the place of actual content (banal carbonated water and a mediocre hamburger). This is modern metaphysics.

Because public relations are built on illusion, they tend to eliminate choice. This is an important characteristic of contemporary capitalism. A Big Mac, like so many creations of PR, is a symbol of passive conformity. As Mac McDonald put it: ‘If you gave people a choice, there would be chaos.’”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , , ,

The Weekly Text, Friday 16 December 2022: History of Hip-Hop Lesson 2, Homer–History’s First Hip-Hop Songwriter

Posted on December 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is the second lesson plan from the History of Hip-Hop Unit. This lesson posits, proceeding from the previous two, that Home’s Odyssey and Iliad, composed to be read aloud and to glorify Greece, that these ancient epics are two of the world’s first Hip-Hop songs. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Muses so that students understand the reference in the first stanza of the Iliad. Here is the worksheet with reading and comprehension questions that is the centerpiece of this lesson.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

Tagged , , , , , ,