Here is a reading on Louis Pasteur and pasteurization along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Given the current ascendance of germ theory denialism, this reading, from the Intellectual Devotional series, is particularly timely
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 concept of the Freudian Slip. This is a half-page worksheet with a single-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. I cannot, for the life of me, remember why I wrote this. Usually, that means I put some together in response to student interest; that is all but certainly the case here.
This might be too abstract or advanced an idea for some students–and, depending on one’s thoughts about such things, it might also be a bit risque. I don’t know. I do know that it’s worth mentioning that there is a more clinical term for the Freudian Slip, to wit, parapraxis. This worksheet, as it is in Microsoft Word, could easily be recast to call upon students to understand the concept of parapraxis.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the phrase “get someone’s goat.” This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and three comprehension questions.
As you know, this expression means, as the reading has it, “to make someone annoyed or angry.” The expression originates from a tradition in horse racing involving placing a goat, which was believed to exercise a calming influence over high-strung thoroughbreds, in the stall with a race horse. This explanation for the expression originated, evidently, with H.L. Mencken. However, there is reason to doubt the legitimacy of the origin story for this expression. Wherever it originated, this idiom has a rich history.
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.
Here is a reading on sulfa drugs and World War II along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
While this material probably qualifies as minutia in the grand sweep of the history of World War II, it is in fact an important moment in the war. This reading is an exposition of cause and effect: by mass chemoprophylaxis (the act of administering medication in the hopes of preventing disease spread) with sulfa drugs, the US Navy saved an estimated 1 million man days and between $50 million and $100 million in 1944 dollars. Ultimately, penicillin replaced sulfadiazine, or sulfa drugs. It is just this kind of cause-and-effect scenario, in my observation in New York State, that tends to inform questions on high-stakes social studies tests.
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 business concept of a franchise. This is a half-page worksheet with a relatively dense three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. Surprisingly, in so brief a reading, all the relevant bases are covered in the relationship between a franchisor and a franchisee. So this is a thorough general introduction (I worked in a business- and finance-themed high school in Lower Manhattan for ten years, so I’m sure I wrote this for use in one or more classes), but there is plenty of room to expand this document, which is easily done since it is formatted in Microsoft Word.
I don’t want to belabor the point, but this worksheet as nothing to do with the the word franchise in the meaning for which it has recently been ubiquitous in the news (because of state legislatures across the United States seeking to restrict it), to wit, “a constitutional or statutory right or privilege; especially the right to vote.” In fact, if you click through on the link above in this paragraph, it will take you to Merriam-Webster’s extensive definition of this polysemous word. Did you know it also has use as a verb, i.e. “to grant a franchise to”?
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.
Here is a reading on Kim Philby along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I have always found Philby a fascinating figure.
But so are the rest of the so-called Cambridge Five. Without them, one wonders, would John LeCarre (real name David Cornwell) have become a novelist? Betrayal of one’s country and fellows was a preoccupation of LeCarre’s. These guys–Philby, Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, John Cairncross, and Donald Maclean–most certainly betrayed Great Britain.
This is another reading from the Intellectual Devotional series whose typescripts and ancillary worksheet I developed during the COVID19 pandemic. As of this writing, I haven’t used these documents in the classroom. Nonetheless, I have tagged them as high-interest materials because I am confident that for the right student(s), they will be.
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 reading on Dwight D. Eisenhower along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
This is a good general introductory biography of Ike; it includes information about his military service and his political career, including his firm support for enforcing the Brown v. Board of Education decision. What it doesn’t mention, and which it may serve as a convenient jumping-off point for, is his famous farewell address, in which he coined the term “Military-Industrial Complex.”
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 concept of free will. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions.
In other words, it barely introduces, and in no way does justice to, one of the big, big questions in philosophy and religion. But as an adjunct to a fictional allegory on protagonists with circumscribed lives? This might be a useful document. In any case, it is formatted (like most of the things you’ll find on this blog) in Microsoft Word, so it is open source and therefore yours to do with as you need or wish.
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.
Here is a reading on Glasnost along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As I was a Russian and Soviet Studies student at both the undergraduate and graduate level, I can tell you that this one-page reading, from the Intellectual Devotional series, does justice to the topic.
Incidentally, the Russian word root glas means “voice.” So, while one popular definition of glasnost is “openness,” it also means, as this definition from Merriam-Webster’s connotes, the freedom to use one’s voice to discuss previously circumscribed or forbidden topics.
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 Edwardian Period in England, so named for King Edward VII, the eldest son of Queen Victoria.
This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two clauses, the second of which is a longish compound sentence. There are three comprehension questions. This worksheet may have greater or lesser utility, depending on how much you need or want students to know about this period in British history. This document if, of course, formatted in Microsoft Word, so you may manipulate it to your and your students’ needs.
Who knows, you might have someone in your class interested in the Teddy Boys, and this reading provides an entree into their fashion sense.
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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