Tag Archives: cultural literacy

Cultural Literacy: Mali

Moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Mali. This is a full-page document with a reading of five sentences–and beware that first sentence with a long list of border states to Mali and their directions separated by serial commas–and nine 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: Black Power

If you can use it, and there are related materials elsewhere on this blog, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Black Power Movement. This is a full-page document with a reading of four sentences (the last one a long compound separated by a colon) and five 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: Zimbabwe

If you can use it–and I think it might be useful in a global studies class–here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Zimbabwe. This is a two-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and nine comprehension questions. The reading includes material on the fact that Zimbabwe, when it was known as Rhodesia, (you know, the country Cecil Rhodes humbly named for himself) “was a a renegade state ruled by a white minority.”

In other words, there is room here to conduct an inquiry on the ugly nature of colonialism, particularly as a manifestation of white supremacy.

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: Colin Powell

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Colin Powell. This is a half-page document with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension worksheets. Once again, the authors and editors of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Hirsch, E.D., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002) have come through with a short, punchy reading that includes the high points of this distinguished American’s career.

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: Ghana

Should you need it, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Ghana. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and seven comprehension questions. The worksheet is heavy on geographic information about the greater region of West Africa, so it may well be appropriate for independent practice.

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: Kwame Nkrumah

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Kwame Nkrumah. This is a half-page document with a reading of two sentences and three comprehension questions. It’s a concise biography of this anti-colonialist statesman–but little more.

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: Reggae

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on reggae. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two relatively simple declarative sentences and two comprehension questions: a short, symmetrical reading on this popular music genre.

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: Watts Riots

When I prepared this document a couple of years ago, I found myself wondering if the Watts Riots are on anyone’s mind anymore. I’m old enough to remember them distinctly and I certainly remember the film Wattstax, which I badly wanted to see. At age 14, alas, I couldn’t surmount its R rating–so given, I assume, because of Richard Pryor’s hilarious “license-plate-pressing motherf*****r” routine.

Anyway, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Watts Riots. This is a half-page document with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. The reading does mention the Rodney King beating, which is, I submit, an association worth making in an exercise like this.

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: Tin Pan Alley

While I fear it falls far short of the standards to which I like to think this blog conforms, here, nonetheless, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Tin Pan Alley. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences–the first a compound separated by a semicolon, the second a longish declarative sentence–and three questions. The reading presents the term “Tin Pan Alley” as metaphorical and notes that it is “not used as much today as it was a generation or two ago” to refer, generally, “to the popular music industry in the United States.”

My problem is this: Tin Pan Alley is a metaphor, yes, but it was also a real place in Manhattan. So, and I think this especially true for those of us who teach in the Five Boroughs, our students ought to know about the literal (to use an overworked adjective) Tin Pan Alley.

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: The Three Musketeers

In this age of super-duper video games, I doubt there would be much call for this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Three Musketeers. In middle school, I loved the swashbucklers, but it doesn’t appear they are much read anymore. I suppose, if nothing else, this half-page document with its three-sentence reading and three comprehension question might play a role in some sort of instruction in literary history, especially where Dumas is concerned.

And it seems to me that most people in the world would benefit from dedicating some thought to the Three Musketeers’ motto: “All for one and one for all.”

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.