“What did Zora Neale Hurston do before becoming a novelist? Hurston was a folklorist who studied with anthropologist Franz Boas at Barnard College. In Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938), she compiled black traditions of the South and the Caribbean. Her novels include Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“Our Western dating system–BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini–Year of Our Lord)–was conceived in the sixth century by a Romanian monk called Dionysius Exiguus, and came into widespread scholarly use after its adoption by the Anglo-Saxon historian the Venerable Bede. Prior to that, European historians dated years according to the Roman consul who held office in a given year.
Working in Rome, Dionysius declared that the current year was 525 AD, based on the birth of Christ taking place in the year 1 (there being not Western concept at the time of zero). Gospel historians later decided that Jesus was actually born a few years earlier, between 6 and 4 BC. Dionysius, it seems, may have wanted to disprove the idea that the end of the world would take place 500 years after the Birth of Jesus. That would have made it 6000 years after the creation, which was believed to have taken place 5500 years before Christ. Dionysius himself estimated, based on cosmological readings, that the end of the world would take place in 2000.
The CE/BCE (Common Era) designations, increasingly used to secularize history, are widely regarded as modern, politically correct innovations but were in fact introduced by Jewish historians in the mid-nineteenth century. But for those who might want an alternative, there are plenty of other dating systems. The Jews start their calendar in 3761 BC; the Mayans, in 3114 BC; the Chinese, with the start of the Yellow Emperor’s reign in 2696 BC; the Japanese in 680 BC; the Muslims, with the emigration of the Prophet Muhammad to Medina from Mecca in 622 AD; the Copts, with the Year of the Martyrs in 284 AD, while the Ethiopian Church starts the clock back in 5493 BC.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Did Alice Walker start out by writing fiction or poetry? The first published work of the poet and novelist was a book of poetry: Once: Poems (1968). She followed up soon after, however, with a novel: The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970).
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Here we are at Blog Post 2000. I have a number of documents to post, all from the first third of my career, when I was just figuring out how to assess students’ abilities and design instruction that challenged them, but didn’t frustrate them.
So, for starters, here is a learning support on the kinds of questions that drive research projects.
Next, here is a learning support on writing notecards for research papers. I don’t know if teachers still require students to keep analog note-cards in the real world, but the social studies teacher with whom I taught sophomore global studies in Manhattan at the beginning of this (2018-2019) school year still–to his credit–required them. Whatever you do in your classroom, perhaps this structured note-card blank will help students learn and master this task essential to the craft of research.
This sample outline learning support and this style sheet on using structured outlining blanks, you will notice, are basically the same material. The style sheet accompanies these structured outlining blanks.
Finally, here is a document I call the research paper in miniature. I use this document to show students, in essence, what a research paper is, why the authors of these kinds of papers must cite sources, and even ask them to infer the argument (i.e. the origins of rock and roll are in the blues and other African musical forms) from the paragraph they read. As I write this, I realize that I have a lesson plan to rationalize the research paper in miniature, so I’ll post that as a Weekly Text sometime over the summer when I have a chance to revise it.
That’s it. I emptied out the folder for Blog Post 2000. Now to start working on my next thousand posts.
OK: here, on a Tuesday morning, is a complete lesson plan on the personal pronoun in the nominative case.
I begin this lesson, after a class change, with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Jargon; and if the lesson, for whatever reason (there are many in classroom, as we teacher know) continues into a second day, here is a second do-now, an Everyday Edit worksheet on Booker T. Washington. Incidentally, if you or your students find Everyday Edits useful or edifying, the good people at Education World offer a yearlong supply of them for the taking.
This scaffolded worksheet on using the personal pronoun in the nominative case is the mainstay of this lesson. Finally, here is a learning support on pronouns and case to help students navigate this area of usage and develop their own understanding–and mastery–of 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.
“(b. 1945) U.S. soprano. Born in Augusta, Ga., she won the Munich International Music Competition in 1968, and debuted in in Berlin as Elisabeth in Tannhauser (1969), She appeared at La Scala in 1972 and made recital debuts in London and New York the next year. Having garnered extraordinary praise for year, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in Le Troyens in 1983, confirming her reputation as perhaps the greatest soprano of her generation. An imposing stage presence, her operatic and concert repertoire ranges with equal conviction and musicality across an exceptionally wide range.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged black history, music, readings/research, united states history, women's history
In my current posting in Springfield, Massachusetts, I have encountered the most simpatico colleague with whom I’ve worked as a teacher. Unfortunately, she is about to depart the school. I bid her a fond farewell; I also thank her for bringing into our classroom Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s slim but compelling volume We Should All Be Feminists. I was aware of Ms. Adichie over the years, and at one point, on National Public Radio, I listened to a feature on what I could have sworn the reporter called the “Children of Achebe”–referring, of course, the Chinua Achebe–but I cannot for the life of me find anything on this on the Internet.
This is not to say that NPR didn’t cover Mr. Achebe, a towering figure in global literature in general and African literature in particular, because the media outlet definitely did, including an interview with that great interrogator, Terry Gross. The BBC reported on something close to what I thought I heard on NPR, to wit a report on Achebe’s heirs–which names among that group Ms. Adichie, Ben Okri, and Chris Abani. Just so readers don’t think I missed anything (even though this is still a far-from-complete list of Nigeria’s distinguished writers), Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka makes this list–and he is eatured, incidentally in conversation with Henry Louis Gates, in the current edition of The New York Review of Books.
In any case, I’d of course seen the We Should All Be Feminists over the years since its publication, but was too busy with other things to engage with it. But now that I’ve had time to read it a couple of times, readers of this blog won’t be surprised that I’ve begun developing a self-selected and self-paced reading unit to accompany the book. Incidentally, part of the impetus for this (it has turned out to be a bigger project than I’d initially envisioned) project is the fact that this text began its life as a TED Talk, which makes it accessible to struggling readers and English language learners; the other, major part of my motivation for this is the interest the girls in our class took in it. This is a book kids like and to which they relate.
So, the fruits of my labor thus far are five vocabulary-building worksheets and five comprehension worksheets. These are, you will perceive, in their initial stage. Owing to time constraints, as well as to focus on this endeavor and put my best work into it, I am working on this in stages. By this time (i.e. March, which is of course Women’s History Month) next year, I plan to have this material ready to post as a Weekly Text.
For now, however, this stuff is just too tentative. I do want to say this: if you have ever considered commenting on material on Mark’s Text Terminal, I would encourage you to do so now. I am particularly interested in hearing from women about how I could dilate upon the basic questions the comprehension worksheet asks, and improve them, and improve this whole project. And internet trolls? Don’t bother. I’ll just trash your comments.
And, as always:
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.
It’s finally starting to feel like spring in New England, for which I am grateful. In celebration of spring, and of Women’s History Month 2019, here is a reading on Bessie Smith, the justly named “Empress of the Blues,” with an accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
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.
“(1987) A novel by Toni Morrison, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. It is the story of a runaway slave whose desperation forces her to slash her infant daughter’s throat with a handsaw rather than see the child in chains. But eighteen years after the child’s death, a young woman appears and the characters believe she is the slain infant returned to earth. Set in the pre- and post-Civil War era outside Cincinnati, Beloved is developed through a series of flashbacks to the Sweet Home Plantation. The main characters are Sethe, the heroine who is literally haunted by the baby daughter she killed; Beloved, the ghost of Sethe’s child; Paul D., a former slave who knew Sethe when they were together at Sweet Home; and Denver, one of Sethe’s other three children.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Here’s an Everyday Edit on poet Phyllis Wheatley.
If your students like Everyday Edit worksheets, please remember that the good people at Education World give away a year’s supply of them.
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