Tag Archives: black history

The Weekly Text, August 25, 2017: A Lesson Plan on Using Prepositions with Pronouns in the Objective Case

Last spring, while teaching my unit on prepositions, I found I needed to revise and strengthen this lesson plan on using prepositions with pronouns in the objective case; as long as I had it out, I duplicated and set it aside for a future text, and that future has arrived, so here it is as a Weekly Text.

To teach this lesson you’ll need the two do-now exercises (and, as I’ve written here before, if you like Everyday Edits, the good people at Education World generously give them away), the first of which is an Everyday Edit on Charles Drew; the second, another Everyday Edit, this one on the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, you may need if classroom exigencies extend this lesson into a second day. The mainstay of this lesson is this scaffolded worksheet on using prepositions with the objective case of pronouns. Your students and you will probably find useful this learning support to accompany the worksheet.

I design my worksheets, as you’ll see explained in the About Weekly Texts on the home page banner, so that I can insert students’ names in them as both subject and object noun. This worksheet is, in terms of these insertions, complicated sufficiently that I’ve decided to include in this post this finished copy, ready for classroom use, of the worksheet to demonstrate how to fill the asterisks with subject and object nouns in the worksheet itself. Finally, here is the teacher’s copy of the worksheet which serves as the answer key as well.

That’s it. I hope this lesson is useful to you, and not marred by its prolixity.

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.

Wise Words from Africa on Willful Ignorance

“Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.”

African Proverb

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

James Baldwin on Education as a Consciousness Raising Process

(Aside: Have you seen I Am Not Your Negro, the documentary about James Baldwin’s abandoned book, Remember This House? It’s a fine film, richly deserving of all the fulsome praise it has garnered. I highly recommend it.)

“The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.”

James Baldwin “The Negro Child—His Self Image” in The Saturday Review (1963)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

Langston Hughes on Deferring Dreams

“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”

Langston Hughes “A Dream Deferred” (1936)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

Poignant Words from Melba Patillo Beals, an American Hero

“When I watch news footage of the day we entered the school guarded by the 101st soldiers, I am moved by the enormity of that experience. I believe that was a moment when the nation took one giant step forward.”

Melba Patillo Beals on the Integration of Little Rock Schools in Warriors Don’t Cry (1994)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

The Weekly Text, March 17, 2017, Women’s History Month 2017 Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Jackie Joyner-Kersee

This week’s Text for week three of Women’s History Month is a reading on Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee, which may well be of higher interest to students than some of the readings posted this month. Here is a comprehension worksheet to accompany it.

And that’s it for this short (we had a snow day on Tuesday) but busy week.

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.

Oprah on Diversity and Achievement

“Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954-)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

The Weekly Text, March 3, 2017, Women’s History Month 2017 Week I: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Billie Holiday

Last March, after Black History Month had concluded, I somehow missed the fact that the third month of the year is Women’s History Month. So, I neglected to post any work for the Month last year; I won’t overlook it this year. The next five Fridays at Mark’s Text Terminal will feature readings to honor Women’s History Month. You might also want to take a look at the National Women’s History Project website, and the U.S. Government’s Women’s History Month website, which is a joint project of The Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Here at Mark’s Text Terminal, the month begins with a bridge reading between Black History Month and Women’s History Month. This week’s Text is on the sublime Billie Holiday. Lady Day, as is well known, led a tragic and abbreviated life, cut short by her own self-destructive excesses. For that reason, you might want to euphemize or otherwise edit this reading on Billie Holiday. Whatever you choose to do, here is a comprehension worksheet to accompany it. I teach high school, where this reading is appropriate. For lower grades, I expect that the reading would need redaction.

There is a case to be made that without the racism that made the lives of so many African-American musicians difficult if not miserable–and I’m thinking of Lester Young (who enjoyed a beautiful musical rapport with Billie Holiday), Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Dexter Gordon, among others–Lady Day would have been a superstar on the order of a Beyonce, or a nearer contemporary of hers, Frank Sinatra. After all, both Mr. Sinatra and Ms. Holiday were cultivating similar artistic ground in the Great American Songbook.

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.

The Weekly Text, February 24, 2017, Black History Month 2017 Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Sharecropping

For the fourth and final week of Black History Month 2017, Mark’s Text Terminal offers this reading on sharecropping, which represents at best a particularly ugly moment in the economic history of the United States, and at worst (toward which I tend), slavery by another name. You’ll probably find this comprehension sheet to accompany it useful. This is probably more a social studies assignment than anything else. As I understand Black History Month, to some extent, as a celebration, I post this work with some circumspection. It is, after all, a story of the ongoing oppression of Americans of African descent, even after their ostensible emancipation from slavery.

In life, however, one takes the bad with the good. This is history that requires repeating, especially in these grim days when we in the United States have just elevated to the office of Attorney General a man known for racist remarks and for singing the praises of the Ku Klux Klan.

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.

The Weekly Text, February 17, 2017, Black History Month 2017 Week III: A Trove of Documents for Teaching Langston Hughes’ Poem “I, too, Sing America”

For the third week of Black History Month, Mark’s Text Terminal showcases Langston Hughes and his poem “I, too, sing America.” This week’s text is a reading which includes the poem itself with this comprehension and exegesis worksheet to analyze the poem. While this worksheet asks questions just slightly above the comprehension level of understanding, the reading does a nice job of presenting its exegesis of the poem in that way. Struggling learners and readers therefore have a chance to perform genuine exegetical work on this key literary monument of the Harlem Renaissance. Finally, because I believe in using every lesson as an opportunity to build students’ vocabularies, here is a context clues worksheet on the noun exegesis, another on the noun exegete, and a third on the adjective exegetical.

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.