Tag Archives: film/television/photography

Cultural Literacy: Jim Thorpe

Posted on October 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

As there is a movie about him in the works (and if you look under that link, you will learn, happily I hope, that the production team is made up of Native American people), now seems like a good time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Jim Thorpe. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-question reading and two comprehension questions. In other words, a spare introduction to this famous athlete. Still, it’s a good place to start–especially if our students end up seeing this movie when it arrives.

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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William Walker

Posted on September 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

[It may seem unusual to find an Anglo name like William Walker as the header of a post observing Hispanic Heritage Month 2023. If you read on, however, you will see that Walker, a mercenary from the United States, played a substantial role in extending United States influence in Latin America, particularly Nicaragua. I became interested in Walker after seeing Alex Cox’s strange–surreal might be the right word here–film Walker, for which the late great Joe Strummer supplied the music.]

“William Walker: (1824-1960) U.S. military adventurer. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, he moved to California in 1850. His interest in colonizing Baja California developed into a filibustering (insurrection) scheme. He landed at La Paz (1853) and proclaimed Lower California and Sonora an independent republic, but Mexican resistance forced him back to the U.S. In 1855 he sailed to Nicaragua, where he effectively established himself as leader. There, officers of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Accessory Transit Co. promised him financial assistance in a plot to take the company away from Vanderbilt. Walker seized the company and turned it over to them, then made himself president of Nicaragua (1856). In 1857 Vanderbilt induced five Central American republics to drive walker out. In 1860 he attempted a filibuster in Honduras, where he was captured and executed.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

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Casablanca

Posted on July 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

Do you have any cinephiles (or cineastes, if you prefer) on your hands this summer? Fans of Turner Classic Movies (which has been in the news lately), perhaps? If so, this reading on the film classic Casablanca and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet might be useful. This is a reading from the Intellectual Devotional series, so a full page of text, along with my standard configuration for the worksheet: eight vocabulary words to define, eight comprehension questions, and the usual one to three “Additional Facts” questions–in this reading, it is three questions under that heading.

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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Book of Answers: Christopher Isherwood and Cabaret

Posted on July 14, 2023 | Leave a comment

What work by Christopher Isherwood was the basis for the musical Cabaret (1968)? Cabaret was based on the play I Am a Camera (1951) by John Van Druten, which was in turn based on Isherwood’s “Sally Bowles,” a story appearing in Goodbye to Berlin. Isherwood lived in Berlin in the early 1930s.

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

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Robert De Niro

Posted on July 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

Here, on an oppressively humid Monday morning in Brooklyn, is a reading on Robert De Niro along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This has tended to be high-interest material, especially among young men, so I have so tagged it.

Nota bene, please, that the reading cites “eight collaborations” between Mr. De Niro and Martin Scorsese. In fact, at least two more collaborations–The Irishman and the forthcoming Killers of the Flower Moon between these towering figures in American cinema have occurred since this reading was published. In other words, as film history continues to unfold where it concerns Scorsese and De Niro, this reading will need revision.

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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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, New York City, Worksheets

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Cultural Literacy: Brainwashing

Posted on June 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Given the state of our news media, this Cultural Literacy worksheet on brainwashing strikes me as timely. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and four comprehension questions. Nota bene, please, that the second two sentences are long compounds with lists separated by serial commas. In other words, this reading may require editing and adaptation for emergent readers and learners of English as a new language.

Where might you use something like this? All over the place, I would think: it would be useful as a do-now exercise for just about any study of twentieth-century political, religious, and social movements. It would also accompany nicely, I am confident, a viewing of The Manchurian Candidate–a perfect film, in my estimation. However, I speak here about the 1962 production, not the execrable, regrettable, 2004 remake from Jonathan Demme, who ought to have known better.

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: Katherine Hepburn

Posted on March 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

Elsewhere on this blog, you will, I admit, find Dorothy Parker’s famously withering remark on the actress, but here, nonetheless, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Katherine Hepburn. This is a full-page document with a four-sentence reading and four comprehension questions.

Incidentally, while I find Ms. Parker’s comment, like almost everything this pillar of the Algonquin Wits ever said, hilarious, I don’t necessarily agree with it.

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, 17 March 2023, Women’s History Month 2023 Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Florence Nightingale

Posted on March 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

For the third Friday of Women’s History Month 2023, here is a reading on Florence Nightingale along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Incidentally, have you read Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey? It was one of the long-neglected books on my reading list that I finally got to while under COVID-19 quarantine. I confess that I didn’t fully understand the book. I imagine the context of its time–it was first published in 1918–might have helped. The book itself, I gather, was a departure from the biographical conventions in the time in that it took a critical look at its subjects, including Florence Nightingale, rather then reciting a list of achievements that became, in their aggregation, a kind of hagiography. A rereading of the book would no doubt repay my effort. At the moment, though, I think I would prefer simply to watch Jonathan Pryce’s portrayal of Lytton Strachey himself in the fine film Carrington, about the painter Dora Carrington–like Strachey a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

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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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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Ousmane Sembene

Posted on February 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

Ousmane Sembene: (1923-2007) Senegalese writer and film director. He fought with the Free French in World War II. After the war, he worked as a docker and taught himself French. His writings, often on historical-political themes, include The Black Docker (1965), God’s Bits of Wood (1960), and Niiwam and Taaw (1987). Around 1960 he became interested in film; since studying in Moscow, he has made films reflecting a strong social commitment, including Black Girl (1966), the first feature produced in sub-Saharan Africa. With Mandabi (1968), he began to film in the Wolof language; his later films have included Xala (1974), Ceddo (1977), Camp de Thiaroye (1987), and Guelwaar (1994).

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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James Van Der Zee

Posted on February 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

“James (August Joseph) Van Der Zee: (1886-1983) U.S. photographer. Born in Lenox, Massachusetts, he moved in 1906 with his family to Harlem in New York City. In 1915 he moved to Newark, New Jersey, to take a job in a portrait studio. He soon returned to Harlem to set up his own studio, and the portraits he took from 1918 to 1945 chronicled the Harlem Renaissance; among his many renowned subjects were Countee Cullen, Bill Robinson, and Marcus Garvey. After World War II his fortunes declined along with Harlem’s, until the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited his photographs in 1969.”

Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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