Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Che Guevara. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of five sentences and six comprehension questions. With this worksheet, I can say that the document joins a growing body of materials on Che Guevara on this blog.
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.
“Mt. Aconcagua: Mountain, western Argentina, on the Chilean border. At 22,384 feet (6,960 meters) high, it is the highest peak of the Andes and of the Western Hemisphere. It is of volcanic origin but is not itself a volcano. The summit was first reached in 1897.”
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
Tagged hispanic history, readings/research
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the term “gringo.” This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of single compound sentence and two comprehension worksheets.
The reading offers no background on this term. Some years ago, for some reason, I read some on the origins of the word. While this Wikipedia page describes “gringo” as a slur. I never heard it or took it that way when I traveled through South America. Often, I thought, it was said in jest.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the term “Banana Republics.” This is a half-page worksheet with two simple sentences and two comprehension questions. The reading note that the “…term banana republic is often used in a disparaging sense” because “it suggests an unstable government.”
I’ve traveled a little bit in South America, and I never heard this term used there. In fact, the American writer O Henry coined the term to characterize the fictional nation of Anchuria, in his short story “The Admiral.” Given the United States government’s tendency to meddle in the affairs of the sovereign nations of Latin America, the epithet “Banana Republics” is a bitter irony indeed. If these nations suffered from unstable governments, in many cases it is the United States–and the United Fruit Company–that has destabilized 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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Barcelona. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of three compound sentences and five questions. It’s a solid reading exercise, I think, for students who might struggle with sorting out the finer details in a passage of text. As a full-page worksheet, it might serve well as independent practice.
But you can do anything you want with it: like almost everything else on this blog, this document is formatted in Microsoft Word, suitable for export to a word processor of your choice, or edited and adapted for your classroom.
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.
Here on the fourth Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month 2021, is a reading on Los Angeles along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
This second-largest city in the United States, known in the vernacular by its initialism, L.A., was founded as a city in 1781, but claimed as Spanish territory by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542. The city became Mexican territory in 1821 after the Mexican War of Independence. Then, in 1848 (a momentous year in world history, to say the least), after the Mexican-American War, following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States purchased the territory that became the state of California two years later, in 1850.
The city is a rich producer and repository of Chicano culture. This is the municipality, after all, that played a role in giving the world the nonpareil Los Lobos.
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 Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba in 1961. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four relatively dense compound sentences and five comprehension questions. The Bay of Pigs debacle, as the reading observes, was an embarrassment to the administration of President John F. Kennedy. It is also a significant moment in the history of the Cold War.
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.
“Jose Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva: Known as Jose Bonifacio (1763?-1838) Chief architect of Brazil’s independence from Portugal. Andrada was born in Brazil but educated in Portugal, where he became a distinguished scholar. On returning to Brazil in 1819, he became chief minister of the Portuguese prince regent (later the emperor Pedro I), who had fled Portugal with the rest of the royal family to escape Napoleon. He became the leading intellectual advocate of independence. After Pedro I declared Brazil independent in 1822, Andrada served as prime minister and as tutor to the child emperor, Pedro II, who became an effective and enlightened monarch.”
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
Tagged hispanic history, readings/research
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Alamo. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three dense compound sentences and three questions. I am tempted to explain why I take issue with the use of the word “heroic” in the text, but perhaps that is best left to the students reading 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.
“Outside of this cell we may have our oppressors, yes, but not one inside. Here one oppresses the other. The only thing that seems to disturb me…because I’m exhausted, or conditioned, or perverted…is that someone wants to be nice to me, without asking anything back for it.”
Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman ch. 11 (1976)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
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