“When did Thoreau live in his hut at Walden Pond? For two years from 1845 to 1847. His account of the experience, Walden, or Life in the Woods, appeared in 1854.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Let me start with the documents, to wit this reading on personal identity and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The more I think about the conceptual and personal issues attached to personal identity, and how self-identifying has empowered oppressed communities, the more I think I would like to build either a short unit or a long lesson around these documents. If that interests you, please read on.
It’s one of those big philosophical and psychological concepts, but in the realm of the classroom teacher, individuation means that students have begun the process of discovering the self, or themselves, if you prefer. In any case, identity is important. To whatever extent we can, I think we are intellectually and morally obliged to abet this process in kids.
Especially now, when social media appear, as an emerging scholarly discourse indicates, to erode individuation. If you’re interested, this stylish and literate blog post from The Literary Blues supplies a nice basic outline of the means by which social media diminishes individualism. A lesson or unit on personal identity would proceed most effectively, I submit, if it addressed these critical issues of identity and social media.
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.
“Risk aversion: A widespread characteristic of human preferences, first discussed in 1738 by the Swiss mathematician and physicist Daniel Bernoulli (1700-82), according to which most people tend to value gains involving risk less that certain gains of equivalent monetary expectation. A typical example is a choice between a sure gain of 50 units (Swiss francs, dollars, pounds sterling, or any other units) and a gamble involving a 50 percent probability of winning 100 units and a 50 percent probability of winning nothing. The two prospects are of equivalent monetary expected value, but most people prefer the sure gain to the gamble, which they typically value equally to a sure gain of about 35 units.”
Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
He’s an important, indeed representative figure, of the Mughal Empire, so here is a reading on Akbar the Great along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
At this writing, with the rising tide of Hindu Nationalism engendered by the current Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), this is a timely reading. That the BJP has worked to revise Indian social studies texts to minimize and trivialize the role of Muslims (like Akbar) makes this vital 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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. If now isn’t a good time to spend some time reading, thinking, and writing about the rights guaranteed by this Amendment, I don’t know when would be.
If I were teaching this important topic in civics this fall, I would be sure to emphasize the Establishment Clause as well as the guarantee of the right “of the people peaceably to assemble.” As Kevin Phillips’ nightmare scenario of an American Theocracy begins to advance to lived reality, the Establishment Clause becomes a very important topic of study. As far as peaceably assembling, that right appears to have been abrogated.
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 Hundred Years of Solitude: (Spanish title Cien anos de soledad). A novel (1967; English translation 1970) by the Columbian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928-2014), generally regarded as the archetypal example of Latin American magical realism. The setting is the small, isolated Columbian village of Macondo, a fictional community that had previously appeared in Garcia Marquez’s La hojarasca (1955; Leafstorm and Other Stories) and in La mala hora (1962; In Evil Hour). The novel follows seven generations of the increasingly inbred Buendia family, the founders of the village, and their story parallels the history of Columbia itself.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Ok, for Week III of Hispanic Heritage Month 2020, and for the Weekly Text from Mark’s Text Terminal for October 2, 2020, here is a reading on Teresa of Avila along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
Teresa was essentially a sixteenth-century Catholic mystic. Her mysticism, unsurprisingly, brought her to the attention of the Inquisition. She founded a religious order; as the reading explains, she was, in the final analysis, an influential figure in Catholic theology. If you want to move beyond the relatively basic comprehension questions on the worksheet, you–and more importantly, your students–can consider some of the concepts present in Teresa’s story: religious law, orthodoxy, mysticism, feminism and women’s role in the Church, among others.
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.
It’s something I try to work into my units and lessons, and the evidence for its necessity in the classroom is widespread and incontrovertible, so I have used heavily, across the common branch curriculum, this context clues worksheet on the noun metacognition.
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.
“If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Last but not least on this distinctly autumnal day, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This amendment most famously protects defendants against self-incrimination–i.e. they can “take the Fifth” when asked a question whose answer may incriminate them in a crime. The Fifth Amendment also prohibits double jeopardy and mandates due process of law.
This knowledge will help prepare students to what I expect will be heavy use in the coming months of this shield against self-incrimination.
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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