“Fables of Bidpai: An Arabic version of a collection of Indian fables common to Buddhism and Brahminism, also known as Kalilah and Dimnah. They were collected in the Sanskrit Panchatantra and translated into Persian about AD 55. Bidpai means court scholar, and the allegorical animal stories are told as a wise man’s advice to a young Indian price.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“Maxine Hong Kingston originally Maxine Hong: (b.1940) U.S. writer. Born to an immigrant family in Stockton, California, she has taught at various schools and universities. Her novels and nonfiction works explore the myths, realities, and cultural identities of Chinese and American families and the role of women in Chinese culture. Her widely admired The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980) blend fact and fantasy to tell aspects of her family’s history; Tripmaster Monkey (1988) concerns a young Chinese-American man.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“I think, therefore I am.”
Rene Descartes, Le Discours de la Method (1637)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
“How long was the first run of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)? The play opened in New York in 1947 and ran for 855 performances.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“Amorality: A quality admired and rewarded in modern organizations, where it is referred to through metaphors such as professionalism and efficiency.
Amorality is corporatist wisdom. It is one of the terms which highlights the confusion in society between what is officially taught as a value and what is actually rewarded by the structure.
Immorality is doing wrong of our own volition. Amorality is doing it because a structure or an organization expects us to do it. Amorality is thus worse than immorality because it involves denying our responsibility and therefore our existence as anything more than animal.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
Posted in Quotes
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion, professional development
“sound/symbol association: The idea that certain sounds are paired with specific symbols.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“Cliché (noun): An expression so overused as to be trite, such as a hackneyed idiom or dead metaphor; stereotyped, overworked idea; evident commonplace. Adjective: cliché, clichéd.
‘The language is a double-depressant of numbing, cliché-ridden prose that ranges from Lady Bountiful pitter-patter to tearoom philosophizing.’ Colman McCarthy, The Washington Post”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Moving along with the History of Hip-Hop unit, this week’s Text is the tenth lesson plan, on The Last Poets. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Malcolm X. From there we proceed to the mainstay of the lesson, this adapted reading on The Last Poets and its attendant comprehension-building worksheet.
Incidentally, if you’re interested in the full text from which the reading above was adapted, here is a PDF of the master of the reading. I snipped this from a copy of Uncut magazine back when the Hip-Hop fanzines were still published in paper and available at the Borders on Lower Broadway (very near Wall), near the school where I served at that time and where I would pick them up. So, we’re talking, basically, about pre-2008, which is when Borders ceased to exist, a casualty of the financial crisis that year. I had a hell of a time finding the citation, but I am relatively confident of 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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, New York City, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets
Tagged black history, building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge, diction/grammar/style/usage, music, poetry, professional development, questioning/inquiry, readings/research, united states history
“Matte Surface: A dull, flat surface without gloss.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“summative assessment: An assessment used to document students’ achievement at the end of a unit or course or an evaluation of the end product of a students’ learning activity. Final exams are an example of summative assessment. See also formative assessment.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
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