Tag Archives: building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge

The Weekly Text, Friday 7 April 2023: History of Hip-Hop Lesson 9, The Black Power Movement in the United States

This week’s Text is lesson plan nine of the History of Hip-Hop unit, on the rise of the Black Power movement in the United States. This lesson begins with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Black Panthers. The principal work for this lesson is this reading on the Black Power Movement with its accompanying comprehension worksheet.

And that’s it for another 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.

Cultural Literacy: Dolley Madison

Moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Dolley Madison. This is a half-page document with a four-sentence reading 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.

Cultural Literacy: Gertrude Stein

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Gertrude Stein. This is a full-page document with a reading of three sentences and five comprehension question. It’s a curiously asymmetrical page, far from perfect. But is anyone teaching Gertrude Stein’s work? She is presented here as a historical figure and the coiner of the term “Lost Generation,” which perhaps is all high school students need to know about her.

But what do you think?

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 Weekly Text, 31 March 2023, Women’s History Month 2023 Week V: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Birth Control Pill

For the final Friday of Women’s History Month 2023, here is a reading on the birth control pill along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Once again, the editors of the Intellectual Devotional series, from which this reading is adapted, have done an admirable job of including–without, somehow, cramming it in–all of the salient facts, including Margaret Sanger and the United States Supreme Court decision, Griswold v. Connecticut, that made contraceptives available nationwide and therefore expanded women’s autonomy over their reproductive health.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Lucrezia Borgia

Moving right along on this Friday morning, here is Cultural Literacy worksheet on Lucrezia Borgia. This is a half-page document with a single-sentence reading (which notes, I think it’s worth mentioning on this front page, that like her brother, Cesare Borgia, she was “famous for her treachery”) and two 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.

Cultural Literacy: Katherine Hepburn

Elsewhere on this blog, you will, I admit, find Dorothy Parker’s famously withering remark on the actress, but here, nonetheless, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Katherine Hepburn. This is a full-page document with a four-sentence reading and four comprehension questions.

Incidentally, while I find Ms. Parker’s comment, like almost everything this pillar of the Algonquin Wits ever said, hilarious, I don’t necessarily agree with 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.

The Weekly Text, 24 March 2023, Women’s History Month 2023 Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Babe Didrikson

For the fourth week of Women’s History Month 2023, here is a reading on Babe Didrikson (also known as Babe Didrikson Zaharias after her marriage to wrestler George Zaharias), the sports legend, along with its 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.

Cultural Literacy: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. This is a full-page document with a reading of four sentences and four comprehension questions. I’m not sure what call there would be for anything beyond this on the late First Lady–but she is still enough of an icon that this short exercise might find some relevance somewhere.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Frances Perkins

Moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a cabinet position, in Ms. Perkins’ case, as Secretary of Labor in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. This is a full-page document with a reading of four sentences and five comprehension questions.

Did you know she was a witness to the horror of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire? She chaired a committee on public safety after the disaster.

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 Weekly Text, 17 March 2023, Women’s History Month 2023 Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Florence Nightingale

For the third Friday of Women’s History Month 2023, here is a reading on Florence Nightingale along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Incidentally, have you read Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey? It was one of the long-neglected books on my reading list that I finally got to while under COVID-19 quarantine. I confess that I didn’t fully understand the book. I imagine the context of its time–it was first published in 1918–might have helped. The book itself, I gather, was a departure from the biographical conventions in the time in that it took a critical look at its subjects, including Florence Nightingale, rather then reciting a list of achievements that became, in their aggregation, a kind of hagiography. A rereading of the book would no doubt repay my effort. At the moment, though, I think I would prefer simply to watch Jonathan Pryce’s portrayal of Lytton Strachey himself in the fine film Carrington, about the painter Dora Carrington–like Strachey a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

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.