Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

The Weekly Text, 10 October 2025: Two Context Clues on the Nouns Deficit and Surplus, with a Lexicon Clarifying the Meaning and Use of These Words

This week’s Text, for social studies teachers in general and business education teachers in particular, is this context clues worksheet on the noun deficitanother on the noun surplus, and a lexicon to clarify their meanings and use.

Jeez, there really isn’t much more to say about these. I think they explain themselves. If they don’t, you might want to grab a copy of the Context Clues Worksheets Users’ Manuals.

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: Spanish-American War

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Spanish-American War. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of seven sentences (the sixth of which is a long compound, and probably ought to be edited into smaller pieces for emergent and struggling readers) and seven comprehension questions. As usual, the editors of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy do an admirable job of condensing complicated events into a cogent snippet of text.

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: Venezuela

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Venezuela. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of six sentences and nine comprehension questions. Venezuela is a nation that has been very much in the news the past few years. so this document might have some currency. It is, in the final analysis, a literacy exercise aimed at helping emergent and struggling readers sort out a relatively complicated–if also relatively brief–passage of text.

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, 3 October 2025: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Nineteenth-Century Nationalism

For the penultimate Friday of Hispanic Heritage Month 2025 (for which, as I wrote in the first post of this month, I have, embarrassingly, nothing substantial to publish as a Weekly Text), this week’s Text is this reading on nineteenth-century nationalism along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

The reading, along with many others on this blog, comes from the Intellectual Devotional series; I prepared the worksheet. Along with virtually every other document posted here, both of these are formatted in Microsoft Word, so they can be manipulated and adjusted to your classroom’s needs.

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: Ecuador

While I rather doubt that most schools at any level in the United States concern themselves with the nation of Ecuador (where I traveled extensively 45 years ago). Nonetheless, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Ecuador. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and seven comprehension questions. A good literacy exercise for emergent and struggling readers.

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: Conquistadores

While I think their role in Hispanic history is one of pillage, murder, and disgrace, here, nonetheless, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the conquistadores. They are–as below–in Diego Rivera’s mural on the history of Mexico. I hope that’s enough said in justification of this document’s presence here. Whatever the case, this is a half-page worksheet with a reading of of one sentence and one comprehension question.

In other words, perhaps all one needs to know about them.

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, 26 September 2025: A Lesson Plan on William Blake’s Poem “The Chimney Sweeper”

This week’s Text is a lesson plan on William Blake’s poem, from his book Songs of Innocence and Experience, “The Chimney Sweeper.” I started with Blake in high school, after learning of Allen Ginsberg’s (I was seriously into The Beats in those years) affinity for Blake and hearing The Fugs sing “How Sweet I Roam’d” and “Ah! Sunflower,” and have read him ever since.

Blake’s lyrics lend themselves to music, so Greg Brown’s record of Songs and Innocence and Experience came as little surprise to me when he released it in 1986. In researching this post, I was also not surprised to learn that Benjamin Britten composed a song cycle of Blake’s texts, Songs and Proverbs of William Blake.

In this suite of poems, to my mind, “The Chimney Sweeper” has always stood out. It still nearly brings me to tears every time I encounter it.

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on William Blake (half-page, four-sentence reading, three comprehension questions) opens this lesson. Of course you’ll need a copy the poem itself; and finally, here is the analysis and comprehension worksheet I prepared for the 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.

Cultural Literacy: Christopher Columbus

Following the post below on the nation of Colombia, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Christopher Columbus, the country’s namesake. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and five comprehension question. You might want to take a look at the first and last sentences, which are long, heavily punctuated compounds. If you students are up to it, I would leave them be. But the lists, with all their clauses, might be a bit too much for emergent or struggling readers.

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: Colombia

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the nation of Colombia. This is a full-page worksheet with reading of five sentences and eight comprehension question.

This document is a literacy builder, for lack of a better description. The first and last sentences are longish and heavily punctuated, and perhaps might be better off revised for brevity and cogency. On the other hand, the first sentence, mostly a list separated by serial commas, is followed closely, even explicated, by the comprehension questions and follow it. In other words, depending on the readers you’re working with, this document might be the right one to help them stretch into some more complicated material both in form and content.

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, 19 September 2025: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on John Brown

On Monday of this week, Hispanic Heritage Month 2025 began. This observance runs from 15 September to 15 October every year. This year, as with last, I report with considerable chagrin that I have no materials that would rightfully–in the editorial view of this blog–constitute a proper Weekly Text to observe the contributions and achievements of United States citizens of Hispanic descent.

Like last year, I had every intention of preparing a unit on the infamous Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles in 1943. I imagine, or imagined, such a unit would become part of a sociology class I taught a few years ago. Alas, I have never been asked to teach that course again. Last year I co-taught four English classes. It happens that I found a copy of Thomas Sanchez’s novel Zoot Suit Murders in one of the local Little Libraries. So, alternatively, I thought I might work up an English Language Arts unit on that book. It appears to be in print, and Luiz Valdez adapted his play on the Zoot Suit trial into a film that would probably complement cogently a reading of Thomas Sanchez’s novel.

But, since I am at the most eighteen months from retirement and little more than a body (I’m co-teaching two biology classes this year, not a subject in which I possess any expertise whatsoever) in the school in which I serve, if I do this work, it will be after I am no longer a full-time classroom teacher.

In any event, this week’s Text is this reading on John Brown with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

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.