Tag Archives: cultural literacy

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.

Cultural Literacy: Run-On Sentence

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

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. When I looked at this document in preparation for publishing it, it looked crowded to me. That may be on account of the two-sentence reading, which consists of a couple of whopper compound sentence. I’ll publish this today, but check back here in the future for better learning supports on run-on sentences. I’m actually in the process of finishing a unit on sentence writing, and the lesson on run-ons is one of the last things I have to do.

So, like I said, check back if you need something like this.

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: Taboo

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of taboo. This is half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and three comprehension questions. At the risk of pontificating, I think students, by the time they are in high school, really ought to understand the concept of taboo.

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: Realism

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on realism might be of some use in an English classroom, though I admit I’ve never heard the term uttered in any English class I’ve co-taught. In any event, this is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences, the second of which is longish, but not unwieldy, and three comprehension questions. A solid, but basic, introduction to this concept in the fine arts.

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: Read Between Lines

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of reading between lines. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one sentence and one comprehension question. Yet like most of these things (i.e. Cultural Literacy worksheets), it gets a lot done with very little.

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, 8 August 2025: Lesson Seven of a Unit on Writing Reviews

OK–after eight weeks of drafting these posts, this week’s Text is seventh and final lesson plan of a unit on writing reviews. Since this lesson concludes the unit and turns students loose to write their reviews, I have included four Cultural Literacy worksheets as do-now exercises with the idea that students will need at least four days to write and revise their compositions. So here are those documents on hyperbole, nuance, analogy, and paraphrase. Each of these worksheet is a half-page long with short readings and three or fewer comprehension questions.

At this point in the unit, students should have their thoughts on their review outlined, and, therefore, in a final state of organization. So this short organizer is the worksheet for this lesson, and simply asks students a few final clarifying questions on their planned paper. This is for their benefit, and one final clarifying exercise.

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: Pun

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on the pun as a literary device seems to me particularly useful if one is writing about literature, but may apply to other cultural forms as well–e.g. song lyrics and titles. This is a half-page document with a reading of four sentences and two comprehension questions.

A word about the reading: these sentences are long and complicated and may present significant challenges to struggling or emergent readers. I think you’ll see what I mean when you look at it. In fact, for the students I have historically served, this document is probably inappropriate; in the event that I wanted to teach kids about puns (and incidentally, here in New York City, I’ve never seen this done for the simple reason that knowledge of puns isn’t something that Regents Examinations test for; and yes, this is how idiotic this has become), I would probably significantly rewrite this is I were planning to administer it to struggling or emergent readers, or for students for whom English is a second 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.

Cultural Literacy: Plagiarism

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on plagiarism. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three simple sentences and three comprehension questions. I think it judicious, particularly now that we’ve entered the age of artificial intelligence, to remind students regularly of their obligation not to plagiarize.

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.