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
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
OK, for the final Friday of Black History Month 2026, here is a reading on the Underground Railroad along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
Should you be interested, as I most certainly was when I first heard it two years ago, here is a National Public Radio story about the Underground Railroad, and in particular a man named Thomas Smallwood. As the interview subject, Scott Shane, observes, “Thomas Smallwood is an amazing guy who very few people know about.” Mr. Shane thought it sufficiently important that people know about Thomas Smallwood that he wrote a book on Mr. Smallwood, Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery’s Borderland.
When we think about the Underground Railroad, we tend, rightly, to think of Harriet Tubman. Thomas Smallwood is easily her equal in heroic feats of helping slaves escape bondage. He should be better known.
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.
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
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
OK, for the final documents post on this Friday morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Tiger Woods. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions. The first sentence is a complex-compound that might be best broken up, especially if you re dealing with emergent readers or users of English as a second language.
But even for kids reading at grade level, depending on what grade you’re teaching, that first sentence might be a bit much.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on South Africa. This one is a doozy: the reading is a full paragraph of 14 sentences, and the comprehension questions number 15. This document might be best broken up into pieces for struggling and emergent readers.
In any case, you may be aware of a relatively recent federal government program in the United States granting refugee status to a group of white South Africans of Dutch descent. Known as Afrikaners, they evidently believe themselves oppressed; they have found a sympathetic ear in President Donald Trump. Anyone who knows anything about the history of South Africa, and especially the Afrikaners, may be forgiven for their skepticism about all of this.
Because the Afrikaners were oppressors, not oppressed. It really is that simple.
I am interested to see that the first bunch of these immigrants ended up in Alabama–you know, the state with a long history of white supremacy, and which led the way in bringing cases before the Supreme Court to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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.
One of the better (by which I mean most interesting) things I worked on and finally finished last year is this lesson plan on Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me.” As you may know, Ta-Nehisi Coates, in an obvious homage, took this title for his exceptional and necessary book of the same name.
A few years back, a colleague of mine taught it to a class in which I was the co-teacher. This was during the 2021-2022 school year: we were back after the pandemic, still wearing masks, and I had just moved back to New York City after three years away. In other words, I filed away the poem for days when I had a clearer head.
Three years later, and after a second case of covid which left me cognitively bereft for about 18 months, I was able to recover my senses and develop this lesson. Without further ado, then, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Richard Wright (two-sentence reading, three comprehension questions–very simple), which serves as the do-now exercise for this lesson. Here is the the text of the poem itself; and here is the comprehension and analysis worksheet that is the principal work of this 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.
Moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Sierra Leone. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and three comprehension questions. As I prepared these for use, either in the classroom or on this blog, I intended to use them as measures of reading comprehension and mental organization. So there are a lot of questions along the lines of “What nation is to the north of Sierra Leone?” There are several such questions in this document which I hope will help teachers diagnose students’ reading struggles and formulate solutions.
In the case of most of these Cultural Literacy worksheets dealing with nation-states in Africa, the most important thing is to read one sentence at a time, then figure out which question it answers.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Scott Joplin. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two relatively simple sentences and two comprehension questions. Just the basics on this innovative and groundbreaking African American pianist and composer.
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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