Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Calvinism. This is half-page worksheet with a reading of four simple sentences and four comprehension questions. A basic, symmetrical introduction to Calvin’s ideology, which the reading observes is today found primarily in Presbyterianism.
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.
It seems to me that there are a lot of politicians in the United States, most if not all of them Republicans, who are belligerently opposed (I’m thinking of you, Ron DeSantis, above all others here) to the changing concepts of gender in our culture. Earlier in my life, these same troglodytes (is it fair to call them troglodytes? It seems to be a guy like DeSantis makes the average troglodyte look like Bertrand Russell) were exercised by Free to Be You and Me. James Dobson, noted evangelist and right-wing scold, took particular offense and the changing gender roles in our society that this television show discussed–what a surprise!
This week’s Text is this short reading on Free To Be You and Me along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Nota bene, please, that the original sound recording for this television broadcast is available on the streaming music service I subscribe to, so I’ll bet it’s on yours as well.
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.
Alright, here, finally, is the sixteenth and final lesson plan of the History of Hip-Hop Unit. I use this Cultural Literacy worksheet on racism as a do-now exercise. The work of this lesson, which I have allowed to play out over two or three days, is this concluding assessment and reflection and this metacognitive assessment worksheet.
And that, gentle reader, is that. There are now sixteen lessons available on the History of Hip-Hop at Mark’s Text Terminal.
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.
“Our era calls for a public accounting of what caste has cost us, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, so that every American can know the true history of our country, wrenching though it may be. The persistence of caste and race hostility, and the defensiveness about anti-black sentiment in particular, make it literally unspeakable to many in the dominant caste. You cannot solve anything that you do not admit exists, which could be why some people may not want to talk about it: it might get solved.
‘We must make every effort [to ensure] that the past injustice, violence, and economic discrimination will be made known to the people,’ Einstein said in an address to the National Urban League. ‘The taboo, the “let’s-not-talk-about-it” must be broken. It must be pointed out time and again that the exclusion of a large part of the colored population from active civil rights by the common practice is a slap in the face of the Constitution of the nation.’
The challenge for our era is not merely the social construct of black and white but seeing through the many layers of a caste system that has more power than we as humans should permit it to have. Even the most privileged of humans in the Western word will join a tragically disfavored caste if they live long enough. They will belong to the last caste of the human cycle, that of old age, people who are among the most demeaned of all citizens in the Western world, where youth is worshipped to forestall thoughts of death. A caste system spares no one.”
Excerpted from: Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent. New York: Random House, 2020.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history, professional development, united states history
For Juneteenth 2023, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Emancipation Proclamation. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences, each of them longish compounds, and four comprehension questions. Like so many of these Cultural Literacy squibs, this one’s brevity does not attenuate its thoroughness. Indeed, it notes, with historical accuracy, that “In itself, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves, because it applied only to rebellious areas that the federal government did not then control.” That is an important fact to keep in mind when analyzing this document. Put another way, the Emancipation Proclamation was in some measure a symbolic gesture.
By 19 July 1865, now known as Juneteenth, however, the Confederacy was vanquished and the Emancipation Proclamation carried the force of law.
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.
“As I begin to consider whether some educational practices resulted in higher educational achievement, I began to think in terms of patterns, types, and syndromes. Can educational practices, philosophies, and beliefs be classified into broad patterns and types? Do some students learn better when exposed to one pattern or another?
I thought this was a particularly appropriate time to ask such questions. The number of proposed educational reforms seems to be at an all-time high. And precisely when we need stability, we seem to be investing our hopes in one educational change after another—with little evidence that any one of them will improve student achievement levels. Whether because we have too little supporting evidence or simply fail to use that which we have, we go about debating the merits of one or another practice as though we were in an intellectual vacuum relative to our own past experience.”
Excerpted from: Chall, Jeanne S. The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in the Classroom? New York: The Guilford Press, 2002.
Last September, about four days before the beginning of the school year, I learned that I was tasked with teaching a sociology elective in my school. There was, of course, no curriculum. It happens that I know something about the domain, but not enough to teach it effectively.
So, I went write to work reading, taking notes, accumulating text, and trying to synthesize it all into something that had relatively expansive scope and logical sequence. As usual, other responsibilities intervened, and I often found myself without a proper lesson to teach. Which brings us to this worksheet on acculturation. I prepared this, and sixty-nine others like it, on the fly when I needed something in a hurry.
So, if you see the “Concepts in Sociology” header on a blog post, it will be one of these documents. I’d be interested, as below and always, if you use these materials in your classroom and how. Most of them are relatively short, and might be appropriate for do-now exercises at the beginning of a class period. Many of them might be usefully integrated into social studies or English language arts lessons, depending on the texts and approach you’re using in those domains.
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.
“Paradoxical as it may seem, it is this subjective impotence that convinces the intellectual that the one method is right. Everything proves it is right. Dialectics: I predict that the house will burn; then I pour gas over the stove. The house burns; my prediction is fulfilled. Dialectics: I predict that a work of art incompatible with socialist realism will be worthless. Then I place the artist in conditions in which such work is worthless. My prediction is fulfilled.”
Excerpted from: Milosz, Czeslaw. Trans. Jane Zielonko. The Captive Mind. New York: Vintage, 1981.
This week’s Text offers the fifteenth lesson plan of the History of Hip-Hop Unit, this one on one of the seminal groups in the genre, Public Enemy. The lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Marcus Garvey. This is a full-page document with a reading of four sentences, two of them relatively simple compounds, and seven comprehension questions. A bit longer, in other words, than the typical do-now exercise.
Because of Public Enemy’s importance to the genre, there are an inordinate number of materials to use with this lesson. I’ve tended to use them all, but obviously you can pick and choose. So, for starters, here is a reading on Public Enemy along with its comprehension worksheet. Secondarily–or primarily, if you prefer–here are the lyrics to “Fight the Power”, one of the group’s best known songs and the opening theme to Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing, along with the analytical reflection worksheet that accompanies it.
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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, New York City, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets
Tagged black history, building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge, cultural literacy, diction/grammar/style/usage, high-interest materials, music, poetry, questioning/inquiry, readings/research, united states history
Don’t worry, after this, only two lessons remain to post in the History of Hip-Hop Unit. This week’s Text is lesson plan fourteen of the unit, on Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s seminal Hip-Hop recording, “The Message.” This lesson begins, after your class change, with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a manifesto. The central work of this lesson is a reading, and a listening, for which I use this Official Video of the song on YouTube, and the lyrics to the song, to guide students toward completing these comprehension and analytical questions on these verses.
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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, New York City, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets
Tagged black history, building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge, diction/grammar/style/usage, high-interest materials, music, poetry, questioning/inquiry, readings/research, united states history
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