“Zealot: Someone who has the answer to a problem. Originally a religious fanatic given to violence, the zealot is a likely today to be a corporatist expert. They are, as Samuel Johnson defined them, ‘passionately ardent in any cause. They are the bearers of truth.’”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
If you can use them, here are a reading on Alexander Graham Bell with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. There’s not much to day beyond that–other than for the right student, this may well be high-interest material.
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.
“time on task: The number of minutes during an hour and the number of hours during a day that students spend actively engaged in learning in the classroom, as opposed to the amount of time changing classes, chatting, or engaging in other nonlearning situations.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Ukranian language formerly Ruthenian language: East Slavic language spoken by about 41 million people in Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Russia, and in enclaves around the world. Only about three-quarters of Ukrainians are first-language speakers of Ukrainian, but there are millions of first language speakers in Russia, Belarus, and the Central Asian republics. Ukraine’s premodern literary language was Church Slavic. Ukrainian was one component in the chancery language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which also mixed Church Slavic, Belorussian, and Polish. With the fall of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks in the 18th century, Ukrainian-speakers were stateless and the status of the language, thought of as peasant speech by the nobility, was low. The language and orthography (using a form of the Cyrillic alphabet) were gradually standardized in the 19th century.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
While I very much doubt there will be much demand for it, here nonetheless is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Vidkun Quisling. This is full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and five comprehension questions.
Quisling’s surname name became a synonym for traitor and collaborator after his decision, which this document covers, to collaborate with the Nazis during during the German occupation of Norway in World War II. I first encountered this use while reading Christopher Simpson’s excellent book Blowback many years ago; he uses the term, in that study, “quisling governments” to describes the complicity of officials in the Soviet Baltic states and Ukraine in the Holocaust, particularly the events depicted in a film like Defiance–i.e. the role of the Einsatzgruppen in the early days of the the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
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.
If you can use it, here is a context clues worksheet on the noun cant. It means, within the context the sentences in this document supply, “affected singsong or whining speech” and especially “the expression or repetition of conventional or trite opinions or sentiments; especially : the insincere use of pious words.” I don’t know whether students need to know this word or not; I am fairly confident, however, that whenever a mass shooting occurs in this country, and politicians take to Twitter to intone about their thoughts and prayers, that we hear cant in its purest form.
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.
During the month of June Mark’s Text Terminal will offer a four-lesson unit on Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s 2021, Oscar-winning documentary, Summer of Soul. As you probably know, this film compellingly documents, using the long-lost footage the late Hal Tulchin shot, of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival held in Mount Morris Park, now known as Marcus Garvey Park.
Without further ado, and in keeping with the general practice at Mark’s Text Terminal of keeping the documents up front (ahead of my bloviation, that is) in posts, here is the first lesson plan of the Summer of Soul unit. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Black Arts Movement, which I think is particularly salient to both this lesson and this unit. Here is a worksheet to guide research into the principals–spread across 50 years–involved in the production of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival and the long overdue documentary on it, Summer of Soul. Finally, here is the poster or handbill (or both) from the event itself.
Now, if you would like to develop this unit further (there is plenty of room for that, it seems to me, particularly if your students are interested), here is the unit plan. To write additional lessons, should you want it, here is the lesson plan template. If you write further lessons for this unit, and want to create materials using the format in these documents, here is the worksheet template.
Finally, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the A.M.E. Church (i.e. the African Methodist Episcopal Church) that I stacked in the planning materials folder for future use. One direction this unit might go further with, or serve as a jumping-off point for another unit, say, on the Black Church, using Henry Louis Gates’ recent series on the subject to explore the connection between the Black Church and the Civil Rights Movement. There was a a gospel day at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival–including, movingly, Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples sharing a microphone–and the film performs a badly needed service in making the connection not only between the Black Church and the Civil Rights Movement explicit, but also the connection between the Black Church and soul music. I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I listen to some old O’Jays records, it sounds like the men in the group left their church choir rehearsal and went straight to Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff’s recording studio. “Love Train,” in fact, is arguably a gospel song.
OK: more (perhaps considerably more) said than necessary. If this material interests you, stay tuned for the next three Fridays at Mark’s Text Terminal to collect the next three lessons.
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, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets
Tagged black history, building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge, diction/grammar/style/usage, film/television/photography, high-interest materials, music, philosophy/religion, questioning/inquiry, readings/research, united states history
“Ito Jinsai: (1627-1705) Japanese Confucian scholar. The son of a lumberman, he devoted himself to scholarship. He opposed the authoritarian Neo-Confucianism of the Tokugawa shogunate and advocated a return to the authentic teachings of Confucius and Mencius. He helped establish the Kogaku school of Neo-Confucianism, and with his son founded the Kogi-do academy in Kyoto, which was run by his descendants until 1904. His writings include Gomojigi (1683), a commentary on Confucianism that tried to develop a rational basis for morality and the pursuit of happiness.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Confucianism. This is a half-page document with a two-sentence reading that yields three comprehension questions. A good general introduction, therefore, to a relatively complicated subject.
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.
This full-page Cultural Literacy worksheet on Buddhism might serve as a full-period classwork enterprise, or as independent practice. The reading is only three sentences, but two of them are compounds. Five comprehension questions follow the reading. In my experience, which means interest but not involvement in Buddhism since I was a high school student myself, this is a solid general introduction to the precepts of the religion. The worksheet does not, however, deal in depth with the history of the religion–no mention, for example, of Siddhartha Gautama, only “the Buddha.” I know they are synonymous, but if you are teaching the standard global studies (as this material is designated here in New York State) curriculum, this document might not be what you need.
But you may alter it to your needs: like almost everything else here, this is a Microsoft Word document wide open to your editing and general manipulation.
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.
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