Category Archives: Independent Practice

This is material either specifically designed for or appropriate to use for what is more commonly known as “homework.”

Cultural Literacy: El Salvador

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on El Salvador, another Latin American nation that has been in the news quite often lately. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and eight comprehension questions.

A couple of things: the third of the four sentences in the reading is very long; for emergent and struggling readers, it would probably be best edited into smaller clauses. Like most of the Cultural Literacy worksheets I’ve posted during this Hispanic Heritage Month 2025, this one is a literacy exercise designed to help struggling readers understand relatively complex–but short–passages of text. These particularly call upon students to keep straight the cardinal directions of nations bordering on the subject of the document–in this case, El Salvador.

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 October 2025: Two Context Clues on the Nouns Deficit and Surplus, with a Lexicon Clarifying the Meaning and Use of These Words

This week’s Text, for social studies teachers in general and business education teachers in particular, is this context clues worksheet on the noun deficitanother on the noun surplus, and a lexicon to clarify their meanings and use.

Jeez, there really isn’t much more to say about these. I think they explain themselves. If they don’t, you might want to grab a copy of the Context Clues Worksheets Users’ Manuals.

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: Spanish-American War

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.

Cultural Literacy: Venezuela

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Venezuela. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of six sentences and nine comprehension questions. Venezuela is a nation that has been very much in the news the past few years. so this document might have some currency. It is, in the final analysis, a literacy exercise aimed at helping emergent and struggling readers sort out a relatively complicated–if also relatively brief–passage 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.

The Weekly Text, 3 October 2025: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Nineteenth-Century Nationalism

For the penultimate Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month 2025 (for which, as I wrote in the first post of this month, I have, embarrassingly, nothing substantial to publish as a Weekly Text), this week’s Text is this reading on nineteenth-century nationalism along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

The reading, along with many others on this blog, comes from the Intellectual Devotional series; I prepared the worksheet. Along with virtually every other document posted here, both of these are formatted in Microsoft Word, so they can be manipulated and adjusted to your classroom’s needs.

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.

Alvaro Obregon

“Alvaro Obregon: (1880-1928) President of Mexico (1920-24). A skillful military leader who fought for the moderate presidents Francisco Madero and Venustiano Carranza during the Mexican Revolution, he was largely responsible for the liberal constitution of 1917. In response to Carranza’s increasingly reactionary policies, Obregon took a leading role in the revolt that deposed him, and was elected president in 1920. He managed to impose relative peace and prosperity but was shot and killed before assuming office.”

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

Cultural Literacy: Ecuador

While I rather doubt that most schools at any level in the United States concern themselves with the nation of Ecuador (where I traveled extensively 45 years ago). Nonetheless, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Ecuador. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and seven comprehension questions. A good literacy exercise for emergent and 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: Conquistadores

While I think their role in Hispanic history is one of pillage, murder, and disgrace, here, nonetheless, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the conquistadores. They are–as below–in Diego Rivera’s mural on the history of Mexico. I hope that’s enough said in justification of this document’s presence here. Whatever the case, this is a half-page worksheet with a reading of of one sentence and one comprehension question.

In other words, perhaps all one needs to know about them.

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.

Diego Rivera

“Diego Rivera: (1886-1957) Mexican muralist. After study in Mexico City and Spain, he settled in Paris from 1909 to 1919. He briefly espoused Cubism but abandoned it c.1917 for a visual language of simplified forms and bold areas of color. Returning to Mexico in 1921, he sought to create a new national art on revolutionary themes in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. He painted many public murals, the most ambitious of which is in the National Palace (1929-57). His mural for New York’s Rockefeller Center aroused a storm of controversy and was ultimately destroyed because it contained the figure of Vladimir Lenin; he later reproduced it at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. With Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, he created a revival of fresco painting that became Mexico’s most significant contribution to 20th-century art. His large scale, didactic murals contain scenes of Mexican history, culture, and industry with Indians, peasants, conquistadores, and factory workers drawn as simplified figures in crowded, shallow places. Rivera was married to Frida Kahlo almost uninterruptedly from 1929 to 1954.”

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

The Weekly Text, 26 September 2025: A Lesson Plan on William Blake’s Poem “The Chimney Sweeper”

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on William Blake’s poem, from his book Songs of Innocence and Experience, “The Chimney Sweeper.” I started with Blake in high school, after learning of Allen Ginsberg’s (I was seriously into The Beats in those years) affinity for Blake and hearing The Fugs sing “How Sweet I Roam’d” and “Ah! Sunflower,” and have read him ever since.

Blake’s lyrics lend themselves to music, so Greg Brown’s record of Songs and Innocence and Experience came as little surprise to me when he released it in 1986. In researching this post, I was also not surprised to learn that Benjamin Britten composed a song cycle of Blake’s texts, Songs and Proverbs of William Blake.

In this suite of poems, to my mind, “The Chimney Sweeper” has always stood out. It still nearly brings me to tears every time I encounter it.

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on William Blake (half-page, four-sentence reading, three comprehension questions) opens this lesson. Of course you’ll need a copy the poem itself; and finally, here is the analysis and comprehension worksheet I prepared for the 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.