Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Cultural Literacy: Alice Paul

Posted on March 1, 2024 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Alice Paul. This is a full-page document with a reading of four sentences, all of them long, and the first a compound separated by a semicolon, and six comprehension questions. This worksheet is long enough to serve as independent practice, otherwise known as homework.

Did you know that Alice Paul was the first, in 1923, to write and propose an Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution? You know, the one Phyllis Schlafly worked so hard to defeat in the 1970s? If you watched the FX miniseries Mrs. America  (which includes the extraordinary Uzo Aduba as Shirley Chisolm) you know something about this. Alice Paul also worked for the ratification of the 19th Amendment, affirming a woman’s right to vote, to the United States Constitution.

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, 1 March 2024, Women’s History Month Week 1: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Barbie

Posted on March 1, 2024 | Leave a comment

She has had a big year with her hit movie, so here, for the first Friday of Women’s History Month 2024 is this reading on Barbie along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The reading, from the The Intellectual Devotional Modern Culture, takes a crisply and, to my mind, surprisingly critical look at Barbie. I gather the the film does the same, though I have not seen it.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Senegal

Posted on February 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

OK, moving right along on this chilly morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Senegal. This is a full-page document with a reading of four sentences and eight comprehension questions. The first sentence, like many of the Cultural Literacy readings on nation-states, contains a list of countries bordering Senegal and their direction separated by serial commas. This sentence might need to be edited a bit for emergent readers or new users of English.

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: Roots

Posted on February 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the television miniseries Roots. I admit with mild to moderate chagrin that I have never seen this highly acclaimed series–nor read the book. They were both au courant at a time in my life (high school) when I had other things on my mind, had given up television as a vast wasteland, and was in general alienated from the mainstream of American culture. Roots was part of that mainstream, I am happy to say in retrospect, and I need to read it, watch it, or both.

In any event, this is a half-page worksheet with a reading of  two modestly complex sentences and two comprehension questions. Just the basics in a low-key, symmetrical introduction.

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, 23 February 2024, Black History Month 2024, Week IV: Alex Wheatle Lesson 5

Posted on February 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

For the fifth and final Friday of Black History Month 2024, here is the fifth and final lesson of a unit on the life and times of Alex Wheatle. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on social class.

This unit final assessment is the principal work for this lesson, and for the unit itself. You will note that it is a broad melange of tasks. I prepared this document with the idea that I would rarely, if ever, use it in its entirety. Rather, I would pick and choose among the questions and writing imperatives for what best suited the needs and abilities of a whole class in general and single students in particular. In other words, this document was prepared for ease of differentiation.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Mali

Posted on February 16, 2024 | Leave a comment

Moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Mali. This is a full-page document with a reading of five sentences–and beware that first sentence with a long list of border states to Mali and their directions separated by serial commas–and nine 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.

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Cultural Literacy: Black Power

Posted on February 16, 2024 | Leave a comment

If you can use it, and there are related materials elsewhere on this blog, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Black Power Movement. This is a full-page document with a reading of four sentences (the last one a long compound separated by a colon) and five 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.

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The Weekly Text, 16 February 2024, Black History Month 2024, Week III: Alex Wheatle Lesson 4

Posted on February 16, 2024 | Leave a comment

For the third week of Black History Month 2024, here is the fourth lesson of five on the life and times of the British Young Adult novelist Alex Wheatle. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Battle of Britain.

This lesson deals with the aftermath of the New Cross Fire, which is collectively remembered in England as the New Cross Massacre. The centerpiece of this lesson is this chapter from Darcus Howe: A Political Biography (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), “13 Dead and Nothing Said.” This is a fifteen-page article, and I prepared this excerpted and adapted version of it. Finally, here is the comprehension and analysis worksheet that attends the reading.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Zimbabwe

Posted on February 9, 2024 | Leave a comment

If you can use it–and I think it might be useful in a global studies class–here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Zimbabwe. This is a two-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and nine comprehension questions. The reading includes material on the fact that Zimbabwe, when it was known as Rhodesia, (you know, the country Cecil Rhodes humbly named for himself) “was a a renegade state ruled by a white minority.”

In other words, there is room here to conduct an inquiry on the ugly nature of colonialism, particularly as a manifestation of white supremacy.

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: Colin Powell

Posted on February 9, 2024 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Colin Powell. This is a half-page document with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension worksheets. Once again, the authors and editors of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Hirsch, E.D., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002) have come through with a short, punchy reading that includes the high points of this distinguished American’s career.

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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