“In Babylonian mythology, the primeval sea seen as a dragon goddess. The wife of Apsu, the ancient god of the fresh waters, Tiamat was the mother of all the gods. In the famous creation myth of the War of the Gods, she fights against the younger gods, but is killed by Marduk, who, splitting her body, makes heaven of the upper half and earth of the lower.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
If you can use it anywhere, here is an independent practice worksheet on the Manchu Dynasty.
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.
“The supreme Babylonian god of the earth and atmosphere, called the god of lords. Said to have created man and the universe, Bel symbolizes male generative power. Bel is the same word as Baal in Phoenician and Hebrew.
In Bel and the Dragon, an Old Testament Apocryphal book appended to the book of Daniel, Daniel exposes the trickery of the priest of Bel in Babylon and convinces the king that Bel is only an image and not an actual living deity.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged asian-pacific history
In almost 30 years of working with struggling adolescents, just over half of them as a teacher, I have endeavored to help young people dealing with a broad and deep variety of personal challenges. I’ve noticed, in my years as a teacher, that by the time struggling students reach high school, they have endured adversity and failure, which has mutated into both academic and social alienation. My first task with such students, as I have tended to see it, is to assist them in recognizing and overcoming that alienation, and join, so to speak, their own lives. (I guess that says something about how I see education: learning is life, and learning, as I often tell students, is too important to be left in the hands of a fool like me.)
One way I have done that is to respond to student interest for guidance in developing differentiated instructional materials. As this blog demonstrates, I hope, I have worked assiduously over time to create, develop, and deliver such curricula.
A couple of years ago a student arrived in my classroom with an intense interest in Asian mythology. I used that interest as a way of engaging him in reading and writing activities of the sort which he told me he generally thought “sucked.” By exploiting my knowledge of his interests, I learned some things I hadn’t about myth across Asia, developed some new materials, and engaged a very difficult-to-reach young man.
This reading and worksheet on Babylonian mythical War of the Gods was one of the fruits of this labor. In the process of producing this, I also researched the Sumerian and Babylonian pantheons. For the next week or ten days, in this blog’s ongoing observation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2019, I’ll post a number of reference materials related to those mythological characters.
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.
“Yang Chen Ning, known as Frank Yang (b. 1922) Chinese-U.S. theoretical physicist. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1945 and studied with E. Teller at the Univ. of Chicago. He showed that parity is violated when elementary particles decay. This and other work in particle physics earned him and Tsung-Dao Lee (b. 1926) a 1957 Nobel Prize. His research focused mostly on interactions involving the weak force among elementary particles. He also worked in statistical mechanics.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Here’s is an independent practice worksheet on the Han and Tang dynasties in observation of day two of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2019. Remember that Mark’s Text Terminal will post materials related to this area of study throughout the month of May.
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.
“Matsuo Basho (1644-1694): Japanese haiku poet. Basho is generally acknowledged as the developer and greatest master of this form. His haiku went through many phases, evolving from the pedantic verse of his early youth to his lighthearted poetry of his last years. The work of his peak period is characterized by evocations of man’s ultimate harmony with nature. A wanderer for much of his life, Basho also wrote travel sketches interspersed with haiku. Oi no kobumi (1688; tr The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel, 1966) is famous for its opening passages, which reveal his basic beliefs, but the best work in this genre is Oku no hosomichi (1689; tr The Narrow Road to the Deep North, 1966), which, outwardly describing his journey to rural areas of northeastern Japan, inwardly traces his spiritual quest for a beauty and lyricism all but lost in urban life.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Today begins Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2019. Mark’s Text Terminal, as it did last year, will feature posts on topics related to this theme for the entire month of May.
Now that xenophobia and bigotry have returned to a rolling boil in the United States, it’s worth remembering that, as ugly as all this is, the grotesqueries of nativism are hardly a new phenomenon in this country. So let’s start the month with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to remind us of the ignominious places we’ve traveled as a nation.
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 work to clear off my desktop for the start of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2019, which begins tomorrow, here is an independent practice worksheet on Ivan the Terrible. And since parts of Russia are geographically in Asia, this is a perfect place to conclude this morning’s publishing orgy.
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 far as I’m concerned, spring break begins as soon as a publish a few more blog posts this afternoon. You’ll hear not a peep from me next week–I hope you will be, as I will, enjoying the spring weather.
Here is a short independent practice worksheet on the black death. I’ve formatted it to fit on one page of paper, but depending on your students, you may want to spread it our over two pages. Like almost everything on Mark’s Text Terminal, this is a Microsoft Word document, so you can manipulate it to suit your students’ needs.
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.
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.