Tag Archives: cultural literacy

Cultural Literacy: Rosenberg Case

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Rosenberg Case. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. The information in the reading is out of date, as it is quite clear at this point that Julius Rosenberg was in fact spying for the Soviet Union. Ethel’s case, on the other hand, is not so clear cut.

This is a case in which I have been intermittently interested in over the years. When I saw Sidney Lumet’s 1983 film of E.L. Doctorow’s novel The Book of Daniel, I recognized immediately that it was a thinly fictionalized account of the Rosenberg Case. Likewise, of course, Doctorow’s novel. This encounter then led me to Louis Nizer’s book The Implosion Conspiracy, a study of the Rosenberg Case.

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: Subordination

Given this weeks focus on conjunctions, and especially subordinating conjunctions, now seems like a particularly good time to publish this worksheet on the grammatical concept of subordination. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions.

Nota bene, please, that the second sentence, in two parts separated by a colon, contains an example of sentence that contains a subordinate clause. This might confuse emergent readers; that said, it’s a well constructed sentence. When I consider the meaning the sentence tries to convey, I’m not sure what I would do to change it.

So if you come up with something interesting, I would appreciate hearing about 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.

Cultural Literacy: Stock Options

Lately, I’ve been reading The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow (New York: Grove Press, 2010), so now seems like a good time to publish this Cultural Literacy worksheet on stock options. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. Even at the standards of cogency and clarity I have come to expect from The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, this is a remarkably clear and concise explanation of this financial instrument.

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: Status

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on status; as you know, and as this worksheet will help your students understand, “status” is the “relative position of an individual within a group, or of a group within a society.” It strikes me as a timely topic in a democracy under threat.

This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences 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: Status Quo

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a status quo. This Latinism–which means “the state in which”–is a high frequency term in English, especially among educated people. In any event, this is a half-page worksheet with a two sentences and three comprehension questions.

The first sentence is a compound with a colon in the middle of it. If that’s too much for emergent readers or users of English as a second language, simply remove the colon, replace it with a period, and write “For example” in front of the quote that follows.

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: Stanford-Binet Scale

If you can use it, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Stanford-Binet Scale. As you probably know, this instrument purports to measure intelligence and rate it using an “Intelligence Quotient“–which gives us “IQ.” Over time, there have been questions (as well their should be) about the validity of this scale.

I can’t really comment on that. What I can tell you is that this is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. This is just the sparest of introductions to this high-stakes assessment, about which the late Steven Jay Gould (for which I thank him) had some things to say.

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: Subject

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the noun subject as a grammatical term–i.e. the subject of a sentence. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and four comprehension questions.

But, as with most of these documents, there are a couple of caveats here: these are long and busy sentences with several colons and semicolons in play. And the worksheet itself is a bit crowded. I use other materials in my units to teach subjects, so I haven’t used this. If I did, I would probably rewrite the sentences to simplify them, then turn this into a full-page worksheet. Clarifying the meaning of the polysemous word subject, and helping students understand how a subject operates in a sentence, strike me as foundational material in the high school curriculum.

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: Trail of Tears

OK, for the penultimate post of National Native American Heritage Month 2025, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Trail of Tears. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions. In other words, a very basic introduction to this great tragedy in the history of the United States.

Incidentally, you might want take a look at the first of the two sentences in the reading: it is long, and might be best rewritten as two sentences. If you do so, you might want to add another question to align with your reading.

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: Wampum

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on wampum. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one sentence and one comprehension question.

Which is too bad; I grew up, probably having absorbed it passively through popular culture, thinking wampum was currency, or money. In fact, wampum, usually presented in belts, is a complex cultural article in Eastern woodlands tribes of indigenous peoples in North America.

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, 28 November 2025, National Native American Heritage Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on British Settlement in North America

For the final Text of National Native American Heritage Month 2025, here is a reading on British settlement in North America with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. While this text never explicitly mentions the indigenous peoples of North America or the devastation brought upon them by British colonists and their successors, I think that might be a useful point of entry for students.

One simple question: Who is missing here? Or, if you prefer, was anyone displaced or marginalized by the arrival in North American of European colonists? Or, you might follow this up with material on the Pequot War, which answers the two previous questions. Or, consistent with the current administration’s view of historical inquiry, you could say that the British arrived to a mostly empty continent (which, of course, is nonsense), and what few indigenous peoples inhabited this land were quick to abandon their complex and ancient culture to start driving Buicks.

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.