Tag Archives: cultural literacy

Cultural Literacy: Gilded Cage

Posted on August 23, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of a gilded cage, i.e. “to live in luxury but without freedom.” This is a half-page worksheet with a long, one-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. In other words, a short, punchy means of introducing students to this commonly used idiom in the English language.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Ghettos

Posted on August 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on ghettos. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions.

Generally, I try to guide students toward the definition of ghetto that characterizes the concept the word represents as “a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.” If you need to teach about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April of 1943, this worksheet could serve as a good instruction: the first sentence reports that ghettos were, “Originally, areas of medieval cities in which Jews were compelled to live.” However, the second sentence continues, “Today, the term usually refers to sections of American cities inhabited by the poor.” Happily, then, this document does not racialize the noun ghetto–making it, I would argue, useful for opening a discussion about the racialization of certain words in English–if you’re so inclined to do so.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: George III

Posted on August 18, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on George III. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences  and three short comprehension questions.

In other words, this is a short and basic, though, it is worth mentioning, well-balanced, introduction to the monarch whom Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, accused in that document of, among many other things, refusing “…his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Freudian Slip

Posted on August 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of the Freudian Slip. This is a half-page worksheet with a single-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. I cannot, for the life of me, remember why I wrote this. Usually, that means I put some together in response to student interest; that is all but certainly the case here.

This might be too abstract or advanced an idea for some students–and, depending on one’s thoughts about such things, it might also be a bit risque. I don’t know. I do know that it’s worth mentioning that there is a more clinical term for the Freudian Slip, to wit, parapraxis. This worksheet, as it is in Microsoft Word, could easily be recast to call upon students to understand the concept of parapraxis.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Get Someone’s Goat

Posted on August 16, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the phrase “get someone’s goat.” This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and three comprehension questions.

As you know, this expression means, as the reading has it, “to make someone annoyed or angry.” The expression originates from a tradition in horse racing involving placing a goat, which was believed to exercise a calming influence over high-strung thoroughbreds, in the stall with a race horse. This explanation for the expression originated, evidently, with H.L. Mencken. However, there is reason to doubt the legitimacy of the origin story for this expression. Wherever it originated, this idiom has a rich 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.

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Cultural Literacy: Franchise

Posted on August 12, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the business concept of a franchise. This is a half-page worksheet with a relatively dense three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. Surprisingly, in so brief a reading, all the relevant bases are covered in the relationship between a franchisor and a franchisee. So this is a thorough general introduction (I worked in a business- and finance-themed high school in Lower Manhattan for ten years, so I’m sure I wrote this for use in one or more classes), but there is plenty of room to expand this document, which is easily done since it is formatted in Microsoft Word.

I don’t want to belabor the point, but this worksheet as nothing to do with the the word franchise in the meaning for which it has recently been ubiquitous in the news (because of state legislatures across the United States seeking to restrict it), to wit, “a constitutional or statutory right or privilege; especially the right to vote.” In fact, if you click through on the link above in this paragraph, it will take you to Merriam-Webster’s extensive definition of this  polysemous word. Did you know it also has use as a verb, i.e. “to grant a franchise to”?

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Free Will

Posted on August 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of free will. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions.

In other words, it barely introduces, and in no way does justice to, one of the big, big questions in philosophy and religion. But as an adjunct to a fictional allegory on protagonists with circumscribed lives? This might be a useful document. In any case, it is formatted (like most of the things you’ll find on this blog) in Microsoft Word, so it is open source and therefore yours to do with as you need or wish.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Edwardian Period

Posted on August 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Edwardian Period in England, so named for King Edward VII, the eldest son of Queen Victoria.

This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two clauses, the second of which is a longish compound sentence. There are three comprehension questions. This worksheet may have greater or lesser utility, depending on how much you need or want students to know about this period in British history. This document if, of course, formatted in Microsoft Word, so you may manipulate it to your and your students’ needs.

Who knows, you might have someone in your class interested in the Teddy Boys, and this reading provides an entree into their fashion sense.

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.

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The Weekly Text, 6 August 2021: A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Gambol”

Posted on August 6, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Gambol.” To open this lesson I use this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Latinism carpe diem (“seize the day”). This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three questions.

To conduct your investigation into this crime, you’ll need this PDF of the illustration and questions that serve as the evidence of it. To bring the miscreant in this case to the bar of justice, you’ll need this typescript of the answer key.

Incidentally the first time I ever heard another person use the word gambol, it was the legendary Dummerston, Vermont farmer Dwight Miller, while tending one March afternoon to lambs recently born on his farm. Gambol, as a verb (used intransitively only) and a noun, mean, respectively, “to skip about in play” and “a skipping or leaping about in play.” If you’ve ever seen the way lambs move around when they’re excited, this word describes it. I wonder if a context clues worksheet on this word would serve better as a do-now exercise for this lesson.

Addendum, August 8, 2021: Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb gambol (as above) if you think it would make a better do-now for this lesson.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Ethics

Posted on August 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on ethics. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences.

I wrote two questions for comprehension. It’s worth mentioning, I think, that the first question, “What is ethics?”, looks a bit awkward because of the disjunct between singular verb (is) and plural predicate noun (ethics). Needless to say, I am treating ethics as a singular noun because it is a single field of inquiry and study.

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.

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