Tag Archives: questioning/inquiry

Cultural Literacy: Class Consciousness

Posted on October 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

It’s not something we talk about in school, because it offends people’s perception of our exceptional, egalitarian society in the United States. Of course that is nonsense: social class divisions, with unequal access to basic resources and economic privileges, has long been a part of American social life.

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on class consciousness is actually a good introduction to the idea of social class as well as, obviously, consciousness of one’s own social class.

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: The Birth of a Nation

Posted on October 8, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on The Birth of a Nation, the infamous 1915 film by D.W. Griffith. I think now is a good time for students to learn about this piece of racist propaganda.

There, I got that out on the page. I’ve been walking around this document, metaphorically speaking, for months. In fact, I have a good deal of material about this film–and know more about it than I care to admit. Suffice to say this: this film innovated production techniques and really represents the birth of the long-form, narrative cinema we take for granted today. Even the Marxist auteur Sergei Eisenstein admired D.W. Griffith’s advances in technique while deploring the racism of The Birth of a Nation.

Generally, this film in its “artistic” and commercial dimensions offers a lot of grist for the critical mill. I am still working up to posting more material about this hot-button issue. For now, this short exercise will have to suffice.

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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A Lesson Plan on Pilot Checklist Steps from The Order of Things

Posted on October 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

If you have any students with an interest in aviation, here is an Order of Things lesson on the checklist of steps pilots use to assure their aircraft is ready to fly. You’ll need the worksheet with list as reading and comprehension questions to do the work of this lesson.

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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Cultural Literacy: Sinclair Lewis

Posted on October 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

Is Sinclair Lewis taught at the high school level? I don’t remember encountering him, with Babbitt, until I was well into my twenties. He was the first writer from the United States to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. I don’t remember seeing his books around the high school in which I served for ten years.

If you just want to introduce him to your students, or settle them after a class change, or both, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Sinclair Lewis that shouldn’t take anybody long.

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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Personal Identity

Posted on October 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

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.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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Cultural Literacy: Lost Generation

Posted on October 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

Because there has been a surge of interest in the United States in, well, leaving the United States, now seems like a perfect time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Lost Generation, that group of American writers and artists who spend the 1920s in Paris. Among this group, as you may know, was Ernest Hemingway.

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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Akbar the Great

Posted on October 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

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.

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Cultural Literacy: First Amendment

Posted on October 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

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.

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The Weekly Text, October 2, 2020, Hispanic Heritage Month 2020 Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Teresa of Avila

Posted on October 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Persona non Grata

Posted on October 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

As the election began to approaches, I admit, I went into my archive of Cultural Literacy worksheets to find a few that had civics themes or related ideas. Continuing with that, and I hope this document speaks for itself in our current political, social, and economic circumstances, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Latinism persona non grata. It means, of course, “unwelcome person.”

Of which we as a society currently bear a surplus.

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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