Tag Archives: cultural literacy

Cultural Literacy: Agatha Christie

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Agatha Christie. This is a half-page document with a reading of two sentences and three comprehension questions. A spare, but useful, introduction to this prolific and highly influential novelist. Your students might find it interesting, as I did after learning of it in, of all places, an episode of Doctor Who called “The Unicorn and the Wasp,” that Dame Agatha disappeared for eleven days in December of 1926.

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: Guinevere

OK, moving right along with Women’s History Month materials, here is a half-page Cultural Literacy worksheet on Guinevere, known, alas, mostly for being the wife of King Arthur. Perhaps this slim document–it contains a three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions–might spur a discussion about the autonomy of women and their accomplishments and identities separate from their male spouses?

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: Iphigenia

Depending on the depth of the dive your class takes into the Trojan War and its mythology, this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, might be a useful short introduction to her. In any case, this is a half-page worksheet with a three-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: Booker T. Washington

Alright, let’s wrap up Black History Month 2023 with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Booker T. Washington. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences (two of them longish compounds) and three comprehension questions. A solid, if basic, introduction to this important figure in United States history.

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: Alex Haley

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Alex Haley. This is a full-page document with a reading of three sentences and six comprehension questions. The reading doesn’t mention Mr. Haley’s role in the production of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (a salient fact in any writer’s career, I would think), focusing instead on Roots: The Saga of an American Family and its commercial and artistic success.

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: Jamaica

Moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Jamaica. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of six sentences and six 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: Native Son

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Richard Wright’s novel Native Son. This is a half-page document with a one-sentence reading and one comprehension question. A tiny document, of limited utility, I suppose–unless you are teaching the novel and need something to use as a do-now to settle the class after a change of periods. If that.

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: Ivory Coast

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Ivory coast, or as it is more properly known, as part of the Francophone world, Cote d’Ivoire. This is a full-page document with a reading of five sentences and nine comprehension questions. It’s mostly an introduction to the geography of the area of West Africa in which Cote d’Ivoire is situated.

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: Sojourner Truth

Moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Sojourner Truth. This is a half-page document with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. A spare but potentially useful introduction to Isabella Baumfree.

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: Reconstruction

Have you ever read C. Vann Woodward’s monograph The Strange Career of Jim Crow? Martin Luther King, Jr. characterized it as “the historical Bible of the civil rights movement.” Woodward marks the end of Reconstruction as the beginning of Jim Crow, a thesis that I believe remains for many if not most professional historians the final word on the subject.

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on Reconstruction, a two-page document with a reading of nine sentences (including a doozie of a compound in right in the middle of the paragraph) and 12 comprehension questions, covers a lot of ground. Still, if you really want students to understand how local peckerwoods in the South seized power and used it to oppress Americans of African descent for the next eighty years, you’ll need to go to Woodward’s book, or one like it by one of his epigones.

In any event, this document, like just about everything you’ll find on this website, is formatted in Microsoft Word. In other words, you can alter this document to suit your students’ needs.

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.