Tag Archives: cultural literacy

Cultural Literacy: Spanish-American War

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Spanish-American War. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of seven sentences (the sixth of which is a long compound, and probably ought to be edited into smaller pieces for emergent and struggling readers) and seven comprehension questions. As usual, the editors of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy do an admirable job of condensing complicated events into a cogent snippet of text.

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: Venezuela

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Venezuela. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of six sentences and nine comprehension questions. Venezuela is a nation that has been very much in the news the past few years. so this document might have some currency. It is, in the final analysis, a literacy exercise aimed at helping emergent and struggling readers sort out a relatively complicated–if also relatively brief–passage of text.

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: Ecuador

While I rather doubt that most schools at any level in the United States concern themselves with the nation of Ecuador (where I traveled extensively 45 years ago). Nonetheless, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Ecuador. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and seven comprehension questions. A good literacy exercise for emergent and struggling readers.

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: Conquistadores

While I think their role in Hispanic history is one of pillage, murder, and disgrace, here, nonetheless, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the conquistadores. They are–as below–in Diego Rivera’s mural on the history of Mexico. I hope that’s enough said in justification of this document’s presence here. Whatever the case, this is a half-page worksheet with a reading of of one sentence and one comprehension question.

In other words, perhaps all one needs to know about them.

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, 26 September 2025: A Lesson Plan on William Blake’s Poem “The Chimney Sweeper”

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on William Blake’s poem, from his book Songs of Innocence and Experience, “The Chimney Sweeper.” I started with Blake in high school, after learning of Allen Ginsberg’s (I was seriously into The Beats in those years) affinity for Blake and hearing The Fugs sing “How Sweet I Roam’d” and “Ah! Sunflower,” and have read him ever since.

Blake’s lyrics lend themselves to music, so Greg Brown’s record of Songs and Innocence and Experience came as little surprise to me when he released it in 1986. In researching this post, I was also not surprised to learn that Benjamin Britten composed a song cycle of Blake’s texts, Songs and Proverbs of William Blake.

In this suite of poems, to my mind, “The Chimney Sweeper” has always stood out. It still nearly brings me to tears every time I encounter it.

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on William Blake (half-page, four-sentence reading, three comprehension questions) opens this lesson. Of course you’ll need a copy the poem itself; and finally, here is the analysis and comprehension worksheet I prepared for the lesson.

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: Christopher Columbus

Following the post below on the nation of Colombia, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Christopher Columbus, the country’s namesake. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and five comprehension question. You might want to take a look at the first and last sentences, which are long, heavily punctuated compounds. If you students are up to it, I would leave them be. But the lists, with all their clauses, might be a bit too much for emergent or struggling readers.

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: Colombia

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the nation of Colombia. This is a full-page worksheet with reading of five sentences and eight comprehension question.

This document is a literacy builder, for lack of a better description. The first and last sentences are longish and heavily punctuated, and perhaps might be better off revised for brevity and cogency. On the other hand, the first sentence, mostly a list separated by serial commas, is followed closely, even explicated, by the comprehension questions and follow it. In other words, depending on the readers you’re working with, this document might be the right one to help them stretch into some more complicated material both in form and content.

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: Sarcasm

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on sarcasm. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences (the second of which is longish, but not insurmountable for emergent and struggling readers) and three comprehension questions. Just the bare facts about this often corrosive form of irony.

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: SAT

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the SAT. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and four comprehension questions. This document may be a bit crowded in this half-page formatting. But since this document (as just about everything here on Mark’s Text Terminal) is in Microsoft Word, you can adjust it to your students’ needs.

And, editorially, I must say once again that the editors of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy have done a nice job with their modest but effective critique of the SAT in this reading. And I like their use of purportedly in the first sentence.

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: Reparations

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on reparations. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and three comprehension questions. If discussing reparations for the the horrors of chattel slavery in the United States is now forbidden as thought crime (have you seen the index of forbidden words in the Trump administration?), you’re safe with this document. It focuses on war reparations.

Which isn’t to say that one couldn’t dilate on the reading to include reparations for crimes against human rights or the sin and crime of enslavement, no matter how far in the past. I’m just saying.

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.