Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Baghdad. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three short sentences–one of which succinctly states that “Baghdad has long been one of the great cities of the Muslim world”–and three comprehension questions.
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.
“Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi or Mawlana: (1207?-1273) Anatolian-Persian mystic and poet. He was a theologian and teacher in Anatolia when he met Shams ad-Din, a holy man who revealed to him the mysteries of divine majesty and beauty; their intimate relationship scandalized Rumi’s followers, who had Shams murdered. The Collected Poetry of Shams contains Rumi’s verses on his love for Shams. His main work, the didactic epic Masnavi-ye Manavi (“Spiritual Couplets”), widely influenced Muslim mystical thought and literature. He is believed to have composed poetry while in a state of ecstasy and often accompanied his verses by a whirling dance. After his death, his disciples were organized as the Mawlawiyah order, called in the West the whirling dervishes. Rumi is regarded as the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language. In English translation, his work has become widely popular in recent years.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
This week’s Text, in observance of the fourth Friday of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2025, is this reading on Yasir Arafat along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
I’m hard pressed to imagine there is much, if any, demand for these documents; moreover, I understand that Yasir Arafat is a controversial figure. But I also understand that however one perceives Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), he is an important figure in the the history of part of the world we, after the ancient Greeks and Romans, call Asia.
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.
Strictly speaking, this Cultural Literacy worksheet on The Mikado has little or nothing to do with Asian Pacific History, either locally or globally. I should have known this, because as a middle school student, I served as an usher for a production of the play by my city’s Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company.
But if we think of this play as an attempt at representation, then there is something juicy to talk about here. I doubt Gilbert and Sullivan are exactly au courant in classrooms these days, so I also doubt that this document has much use or currency. Rather than throw it away, however…. Well, enough said.
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 Taj Mahal. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions. Somehow, it is at once a spare and thorough introduction to this important piece of global cultural heritage.
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 week’s Text, for week three of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2025, is this reading on Mohandas Gandhi with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
I think it’s safe to assume that I needn’t belabor the world historical importance of the man the world knows by his honorific, Mahatma.
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 Siberia, that vast area of the Eurasian, or Asian, continent, depending on how you parse these things.
This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and four comprehension questions. Let me extend the usual warning about the reading: these are long, complicated compound sentences that really will need to be separated and made simpler for emergent or struggling readers. There is a clause about the metaphor “sent to Siberia” as a form of punishment by isolation that could be omitted–or not, if you are interested in assisting your students make connections between the concrete and the abstract.
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 Suharto who bears that name alone because, according to his Wikipedia page, “In this Indonesian name, there is no family name or patronymic.” This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and four questions.
And here, I suppose, is another item that surely has vanishingly little currency in classrooms in the United States, despite this nation’s meddling in Indonesian affairs, including support for Suharto, whose dictatorship was one of the most corrupt and brutal in the bloody twentieth century.
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.
For the second week of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2025, Mark’s Text Terminal offers as its Weekly Text this reading on Deng Xiaoping along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
I cannot imagine that there will be much, if any, demand for these materials; but when I taught at a school near Chinatown in New York City, there were enough kids interested in the topic of Chinese Communist Party succession (and therefore Deng Xiaoping) that I prepared this worksheet to accompany the reading from The Intellectual Devotional series.
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 Tokyo. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and five comprehension questions. The first sentence in the reading is a compound separated by a semicolon–in other words, ready-made to be edited for any striving readers you may serve.
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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