Tag Archives: cultural literacy

Cultural Literacy: Betsy Ross

Frankly, I am hard pressed to imagine that there is any demand for this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Betsy Ross. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and one comprehension question. I think I learned in grade school about her–primarily through her association with sewing the first United States flag–for which, this reading asserts, there is no documentation.

Every once in a while, I post something that I think is filler. This might be one of those.

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: Pride and Prejudice

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s “comic novel…about the life of an upper middle class family….” This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions. A spare but effective introduction this this story.

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: Mary Baker Eddy

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Mary Baker Eddy. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and three comprehension questions on the founder of Christian Science.

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: National Organization for Women

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the National Organization for Women. This is a somewhat crowded half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. This might be better, if for no other reason than clean design, as a one-page worksheet: I notice I wrote the questions in such a way that they would fit into a half page. The reading supports more than three questions–and that’s without asking critical questions about the material.

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: Minerva

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Minerva; she is, as you probably know, the Roman goddess of wisdom, therefore the Roman version of Athena.

This is a half-page worksheet with a one-sentence reading and one comprehension question.

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, 6 March 2026, Women’s History Month Week I: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Zora Neale Hurston

We’ve now turned the corner into Women’s History Month 2026. Mark’s Text Terminal opens its observance of this month with this reading on Zora Neale Hurston along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Whether or not one teaches Hurston’s novels, it seems to me that students, by the time they graduate high school, ought to know about this important figure in United States cultural and intellectual history.

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: We Shall Overcome

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the song “We Shall Overcome.” This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension question. A spare, but necessary, introduction to this “…best-known song of the civil rights movement.”

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: Spirituals

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on spirituals. This is a half-page document with a reading of three sentences and five comprehension questions. The reading is straightforward, and even the longish third and final sentence is simply a list of famous spirituals that shouldn’t cause a reader at any level much trouble.

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: Chuck Berry

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Chuck Berry. This is a half-page worksheet with a one-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. The sparest of introductions to this musical innovator, but one nonetheless that notes his influence on The Beatles and Bob Dylan.

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: Tanzania

Here is a worksheet on Tanzania. This is full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and seven comprehension questions.

The second sentence in the reading, I must warn users, is a slog. It is actually four clauses separated by semicolons. This sentence outlines the geography of Tanzania and its neighbors–the kind of thing I want to try to use with students who are a bit higher on the scaffold of literacy. If you are dealing with emergent readers or users of English as a second language, I think you will perceive the necessity of breaking up that second sentence, the verbal equivalent of the Green Monster at Fenway Park in Boston.

Fortunately, the task is relatively easy. You really only need to remove the semicolons and turn the clauses they separate into complete sentences and terminate them with periods. For example, the second clause, “to the east by the Indian ocean,” you can rewrite as “The eastern border of Tanzania is the Indian Ocean.”

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