Here is a reading on Mickey Mouse and its accompanying comprehension worksheet. I continue to have good luck using this kind of short, high-interest reading with students who dislike reading and are unequivocal about that sentiment.
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.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I took a new job a couple of months ago; I’m now five weeks in, and so far so good. I’m spread much less thin, and working on literacy issues with much greater focus.
Which has permitted me the time, and the clarity of students who know their interests, to develop some new material, including this reading on comics legend Stan Lee and the comprehension worksheet to accompany it which students requested in an interest survey. You will note, particularly if you’ve heretofore downloaded and used other readings and comprehension worksheets from Mark’s Text Terminal, that these two documents are quite a bit longer than is the norm here. I find that bears what I hope is a brief explanation.
First of all, I synthesized this article from Wikipedia’s page on Stan Lee. While I do understand educators’ concerns with Wikipedia, I don’t think it’s necessarily a great idea to write off the site completely. I use Wikipedia heavily, support it financially, and believe it a worthy resource for certain types of work and fact-finding. In any case, where Wikipedia suffers what I’ll charitably call epistemological problems, I find them limited to politics, especially contemporary politics, and hot-button controversies. An article on someone like Stan Lee, in my experience, is highly unlikely to have been tampered with, and therefore unlikely to contain untruths.
Second, as to length. After trying to keep this reading to one page, I decided to edit together a relatively comprehensive biography of Lee. Thus it ran to two pages, and the comprehension worksheet to five. It goes without saying, I assume, that this document, as are all documents on this website, is in Microsoft Word format. Therefore, you may edit both documents to suit your students’ and your needs. I know this may be too much for some readers; simply cut sections you think are superfluous, and voila! You have differentiated instruction for one or more students.
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.
“A novel (1962) by Ken Kesey (1935-2001). The narrator is the Chief, a Native American whose father was the last chief of his tribe. he is a patient in a mental hospital, in which is represented by ‘Big Nurse.’ The admission of McMurphy from prison precipitates a struggle between ‘good’ (the patients,) and ‘evil’ (Big Nurse), with the ‘liberation’ of the patients from institutional restrictions as the stake. The film version (1975), directed by Milos Forman and starring Jack Nicholson as McMurphy, was an unexpected commercial success.
The term ‘cuckoo’ for an eccentric, fool or madman dates back to the late 16th century, deriving from the expression “a cuckoo in the nest,” denoting an oddity. ‘Cuckoo’s nest’ (along with ‘cuckoo academy’ and ‘cuckoo farm’) arose as a term for a psychiatric institution in the USA in the 1960s; cuckoos notably don’t make their own nests, but lay their eggs in those of other birds. The ‘one flew over’ in the title refers to the final escape of the Chief.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Recent circumstances have required me to produce a lot of short readings, including this one on the arcade game Pong as well as its accompanying comprehension worksheet. If you have kids interested in video games (are there any kids now who aren’t interested in video games?), this is a reading on the very first video game. Do you remember it? I do. And I had no interest whatsoever in 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.
If your students announce an interest in classic American cinema, as several of mine have in the past couple of days, then this reading on the The Godfather and its accompanying reading comprehension worksheet might be just the ticket for them. I’m developing a new series of readings, so there will me more to come on the cinema.
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.
“A film (1963) based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George about the threat of global nuclear destruction. The film was directed by Stanley Kubrick and starred Peter Sellers in three roles, including that of Dr. Strangelove himself (a crippled ex-Nazi scientist) and that of the US president who finds himself helpless to stop events spiralling out of control.
‘Gentleman, you can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!’
Such was the success of the film that in subsequent years any hawkish Cold War warrior was liable to be labelled as a ‘Dr. Strangelove.'”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“A collection of 100 tales by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75), completed in c.1353. Many of the tales were old at this time, and many later writers–including Chaucer and Shakespeare–borrowed stories from the collection. In the framework story, seven ladies and three gentlemen escape from Florence when the Black Death arrives in 1348, and spend their time each telling one tale per day for ten days (Decameron comes from the Greek deka, ‘ten’, and hemera, ‘day’). (There is comparable framework story in The Canterbury Tales.) A film version (1971) by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) concentrates on some of the earthier tales. A similar collection to Boccaccio’s entitled The Heptameron (1558) was ascribed to Margaret of Angouleme (1492-1549), queen of Navarre. The tales are said to have been related in seven days (Greek hepta, ‘seven’).”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“A dark novel (1939) by the US writer Nathanael West (1903-1940). The work explores the seamy underside of Hollywood (where West himself had worked as a scriptwriter), and shows how it eats away at people’s better selves. At the end Homer, a harmless but unexciting accountant, knocks down a boy who attacks him, and is in turn overwhelmed by a group of people (like a swarm of locusts) who are waiting for the arrival of stars at a a premiere.
‘I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.’
Joel 2:25
John Schlesinger’s 1975 film of West’s book, with Donald Sutherland and Karen Black, was highly regarded.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“A film (1955) adapted by Stewart Stern and Irving Shulman from the story ‘Blind Run’ by Robert M. Lindner. The rebel of the title is a rebellious teenager whose unruly behavior culminates in a death-defying challenge in which he and a rival drive their cars full speed towards the edge of a cliff. Starring James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, the film acquired iconic status among the restless youth of the 1950s, Dean in particular often being referred to as the ‘rebel without a cause.'”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“‘Massey won’t be satisfied until he’s assassinated.’ Kaufman remarked about actor Raymond Massey’s heralded performance in Abe Lincoln in Illinois.”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.