Last but not least this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on brainwashing. I imagine the importance of this speaks for itself.
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.
While wandering around in the warehouse yesterday morning, I came across this reading on the influenza epidemic of 1918 and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Given that this historical event has become something of a touchstone for understanding our current circumstances, i.e. the coronavirus pandemic, I can’t quite understand how I lost track of this material.
That is, until I read it. Over the years, I’ve developed a great deal of material based on the mostly excellent readings in the Intellectual Devotional series; I’ve also had a lot of success in using these materials. Students who would turn up their nose at a book, or a reading from a textbook (I especially understand the latter, as most corporate-published textbooks are lethal), will take on one of these–especially high-interest readings. This reading, however, is one of the weakest I’ve seen.
Which, however, provides some grist for the critical mill. Let’s start with the title of this reading. The influenza of 1918 was by any measure a pandemic–that’s why one of the John M. Barry’s book, The Great Influenza, one of the best on the subject, carries the subtitle “The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.” So, the title for the reading in this post offers students an opportunity to differentiate, and understand the difference between, an epidemic and a pandemic. The influenza of 1918 was certainly a pandemic–remember that the Greek root pan means all. This reading, in short, presents an opportunity to teach students the importance of using language with precision.
In other words, the big question this reading raises is: Was the influenza outbreak of 1918 an epidemic or a pandemic?
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.
Finally, here is the eighth and last lesson plan of “The Great Debaters” unit plan here on Mark’s Text Terminal. This is the assessment; I sought to create a document that measures thinking and memory rather than students’ ability to get the “right answer.” I wanted students to think about the readings, the movie, and, indeed, their own impressions and thinking about the unit’s content. This is my attempt (and I’ll concede happily and readily that it could use improvement, so by all means–and please!–chime in with your comments on this) to create a metacognitive assessment. I want students, again, to think about their thinking, especially in the way they used their prior knowledge of the real-life figures in the film better to understand the film itself.
I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun cognition; if the lesson goes into a second day–and I planned that it would–here is another on the noun metacognition. I would like students to walk away from this lesson with knowledge of metacognitive assessments, which I think, and research supports, are an important way of helping students to internalize and commit to memory the contents of this or any unit plan.
And, finally, here is the final assessment worksheet itself. I think there are any number of ways to use this. I prefer to conduct this as a group discussion and note-taking exercise during which students can range freely over the material and their reactions to it. Like just about everything else on this blog, this document is in Microsoft Word, so you can alter it to you and your students’ needs and circumstances.
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 the seventh lesson plan (of eight) of “The Great Debaters” unit plan here on Mark’s Text Terminal. This lesson describes and rationalizes the second day of watching the film. Here is another note-taking blank with which students can record their thoughts and recollections while watching the film.
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 the fifth lesson plan of the unit plan on the Denzel Washington film The Great Debaters. This lesson addresses the attempts of the Communist Party USA to enlist Americans of African descent in the class struggle in the United States. This is a complex and fraught topic, and I believe an entire academic career might be profitably spent on this topic. A good place to go to get a general sense of it is Richard Wright’s superlative memoir Black Boy. Because of Melvin Tolson’s involvement in labor organizing, and his possible membership in the Communist Party (a fact, I find, very hard to pin down), there are scenes in the film of Tolson (played, once again, by Denzel Washington) organizing farmers and farmworkers), I wanted students to understand the allure of the Communist Party to oppressed Black people.
Unsurprisingly, I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun socialism. In the event the lesson continues into a second day, here is another on the noun communism. Finally, here is the reading and comprehension worksheet at the center 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.
Okay, here is the fourth lesson plan of a total of eight in The Great Debaters unit here at Mark’s Text Terminal. This lesson is on James Farmer Jr., the legendary Civil Rights activist, who is a key figure in the narrative of this unit and in the film in which this unit culminates. It’s worth mentioning here that Mr. Farmer’s father, James Farmer Sr. (played in the film by the estimable Forest Whitaker), was a truly heroic figure and probably worth a lesson in this unit. Unfortunately, when planning such a unit, one must make choices. I may return to this unit at some point and add a lesson about James Farmer Sr. What do you think?
I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the verb matriculate, which is used both intransitively and transitively. In the event the lesson goes into a second day (depending on the length of your class period and how you choose to teach this material, there is a good chance it will), then here is another on the noun labor union, a concept and concrete assembly of people that is a key aspect of the biography of Melvin Tolson.
Finally, here is the reading and comprehension worksheet on James Farmer Jr. that is the gravamen 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.
Here is the second lesson plan for The Great Debaters unit, this one on Historically Black Colleges and Universities in general, and in particular on Wiley College, where the action in the film is primarily set.
I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on forensic as a noun and adjective. The context in the sentences is, I think (or hope) strong enough, but it can also be connected to the previous lesson’s context clues worksheet on debate as a noun. I also use this second context context clues worksheet on debate as a verb. It too should help students understand the meaning of forensic, which may be a reason to reverse the order of these two exercises. In any case, that worksheet gives you an opening for a brief excursus on the parts of speech, since you have this word used as both a noun and a verb in the first lesson. In short, with the right planning, there are plenty of connections to be made here.
Finally, here is the reading and comprehension worksheet that is at the center of this lesson. I initially imagined assigning this as in-class group work, with each group responsible for two vocabulary words and two questions. However, this also can be used in small-group instruction, as a whole-class activity. Again, in short, I wrote this to be used responsively and flexibly with students.
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 the lesson plan for the first lesson in The Great Debaters unit plan. This lesson introduces the concept of debate.
I open this lesson with this Everyday Edit worksheet on African American History Month (and don’t forget, to give credit where it is abundantly due, that you can get a yearlong supply of these worksheets at Education World). From there, I move on to this context clues worksheet on debate as a noun. Because this is a definition, discussion, and note-taking lesson, this brainstorming and note-taking worksheet asks some basic questions that should elicit discussion about debate and its role in approaching the truth of a matter.
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.
Over the next several days, I will post an entire unit I wrote, inspired by the Denzel Washington film (he directed and stars as the story’s protagonist, the peripatetic poet and teacher Melvin Tolson) The Great Debaters. on the real-life subjects of that fine film. My original intention was to teach this unit every February in observation of Black History Month. For reasons that involve a long and frustrating story, I was only able to use these materials a couple of times. I’ve parceled them out in dribs and drabs over the years.
I cannot think of better time than now, while students and parents are homebound during this pandemic, to post this unit in its entirety. There are eight lessons in all. I should note, as I do at some length in the unit plan, and as the unit’s title–“Seminar on Prior Knowledge”–that one of the purposes of this unit is to demonstrate for students how learning happens. I want them to understand who the main characters are in “The Great Debaters” before watching the movie. This leads students to understand why it is important for all learning to possess as large a fund of prior knowledge as they can manage to accumulate, or find on their own with the numerous, powerful knowledge-gathering tools–the smartphone is Cold War computing power in the palm of one’s hand–now at our disposal.
In the event that you want to revise or otherwise adapt this unit to your students’ needs, let me start by posting the planning materials for this unit. First, here is the unit plan. This is the lesson plan template. If you want to build some new context clues worksheet for this unit, here is the worksheet template for that. Similarly, here is the worksheet template for building new reading comprehension worksheets for each lesson. This list of definitions for the context clues worksheets already embedded in each lesson will help that part of each lesson proceed without a hitch. Here is a squib on Wiley College, which is at the center of this heroic story, which I grabbed from that institution’s website. Finally, here is another squib on Historically Black Colleges and Universities that I wrote myself and synthesized from a variety of sources, including my own knowledge of these schools; it’s meant to be inserted just about anywhere along the way in this unit.
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, Essays/Readings, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, Social Sciences, Worksheets
Tagged black history, building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge, context clues, diction/grammar/style/usage, high-interest materials, questioning/inquiry, readings/research, united states history
OK: moving right along, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Apollo, that avatar of civilization, order, balance, and light.
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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