For my erstwhile colleagues at the High School of Economics & Finance in Lower Manhattan, I offer as this week’s Text this reading on the joint-stock company and its role in colonizing North America, along with its 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.
Ok, to finish up this Sunday morning, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Back to the Classroom.”
I begin this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “If the Shoe Fits, Wear It.” To proceed in solving this case, you and your students will need the illustration and questions that drive the lesson. Finally, here is the answer key that interprets the evidence in the illustration for students and teachers.
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.
“Dante was a keen follower of Pythagoras, the sixth-century BC Greek philosopher and mathematician who sought to explain the world, both spiritual and material, by numbers. Pythagoras believed that the mathematical principles that underlay the universe, gave it harmony, literally a music of the spheres. Dante, in his great work, Divine Comedy, sought to create the divine song.
The key number for Dante was 11—the union of 5 and 5—and its multiples. The Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, have thirty-three cantos each, and the poem is written in hendecasyllabic rhyme (eleven syllables long). Dante twice provides dimensions of Hell, stating that that circumference of the ninth bolgia (ditch) in the Eighth Circle is 22 miles (miglia ventidue), and the tenth bolgia is 11 miles. There is nothing accidental about this mention of 11 and its multiple 22; twenty-two forms part of the well-known fraction 22/7 which expresses the Pythagorean value of pi.
Three and nine also figure prominently in Dante’s numerology. The three books of the Divine Comedy delineate the nine circles of Hell, the nine rings of Mount Purgatory and the nine celestial bodies of Paradise.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged literary oddities, numeracy, poetry, readings/research
Here is a high-interest reading on comics superhero Superman and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet if you need them.
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.
Here is a vocabulary-building worksheet on the Greek roots meter,metr, and -metry. They mean measure, to measure, and science of measuring. This root gives rise to words in all domains of the the common branch curriculum, as well as of numerous academic terms of art like psychometric and econometric.
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.
“Ziggurat: (Akkadian, ziqqurratu = mountaintop or height) A temple built in the form of a rectangle-based pyramid and made of mud brick tapering in stages toward the top. The ziggurat originated with the Sumerians; the Assyrians and Babylonians later followed their example. Well-known ziggurats include those of Ur and Babylon, located in what is now southern Iraq.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
If you can use it, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the divine right of kings. In this period of United States history, I guess, this is frighteningly relevant material.
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.
“Nomenclature (noun): A system of names for designating the things or member elements of a particular science, field, or discipline; categorical labeling; terminology; list or set of names. Adjective: nomenclative, nomenclatorial, nomenclatural; adverb: nomenclatorially, nomenclaturally.
‘Nailles claimed not to be a superstitious man but he did believe in the mysterious power of nomenclature. He believed, for example, that people named John and Mary never divorced.’ John Cheever, Bullet Park“
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Health teachers (or any teacher, because I suspect there are more kids than we know who arrive in our schools with this challenge), here is a reading on post-traumatic stress disorder and a vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet to accompany the reading.
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.
“Apocalypse Now: A film (1979) directed by Francis Ford Coppola, loosely based on the story Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). The title refers to the Revelation of St. John the Divine, also called the Apocalypse; ‘apocalypse’ (Greek apokalupsis) literally means an uncovering, but is popularly taken to mean the violent end of the world, as described by St, John. The ‘Now’ in the title refers to the fact that the film is set during the Vietnam War (which had come to an end four years before the film’s release). The film stars Martin Sheen as US Army captain detailed to assassinated the renegade Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando, and includes such epic set pieces as a helicopter assault conducted to the accompaniment of Wagner’s ‘The Ride of the Valkyries.’ The massive cost of the film, which was shot in the Philippines and complicated when Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack, was compounded by the extent to which it went over schedule. In the film business it became known by the alternative titles Apocalypse When? or Apocalypse Later. During filming Coppola referred to the film as his “Idiodyssey.” He later said
‘We made Apocalypse the way Americans made war in Vietnam. There were too many of us, too much money and equipment—and little by little we went insane.’
In 2001 Coppola released his own cut, Apocalypse Now Redux (redux is Latin for ‘brought back,’ ‘restored’), which included the fabled ‘French plantation sequence,’ the existence of which had been rumored among fans for years.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
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