Tag Archives: readings/research

Adapted Research Papers 1: Supporting Documents

By 2008, when I started my third and final job working in the New York City Department of Education, I was (or at least I thought I was) beginning to hit my stride in preparing differentiated instruction for struggling learners. When I arrived at my new posting, however, I found I needed to create some sort of differentiation for a research paper project that was a joint requirement of the global studies and English departments.

So, I got right to it. The theme of this research paper assignment was oppression, and there were at least a dozen topics from which to choose. I chose three, made adapted research papers for them, and worked with students on them.

The next year, the scope and content of the assignment changed; the following year, it changed again. I tried to keep up, but in the end I thought it best just to write a set of broad assignments and use those. I’ve posted those in slightly different formats elsewhere on this blog.

Anyway, here are two documents I prepared as supports and instructions for working on these assignments: the first is a learning support that explains research topics and the second is the rules for completing these differentiating assignments. The five posts above this one are the assignments themselves. Let me forewarn you that this is not some of my best work; but rather than throw away these assignments, I’ll post them here in the possibility that someone might be able to use them. Like everything here, these are formatted in Microsoft Word, so you can edit, rewrite, and manipulate them to suit you and your students’ needs.

This series of documents continues for six posts above.

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.

Adapted Research Papers 4: The Holocaust

Moving right along, here is another pair of documents that together, once upon a time, composed an adapted research paper for my struggling students. So, here are several readings on the Holocaust along with their research questions and citation blanks for organizing the information for this assignment.

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.

Collis P. Huntington on his Possessions

“Whatever is not nailed down is mine. Whatever I can pry loose is not nailed down.”

Collis P. Huntington

Attributed in Robert W. Kent, Money Talks (1985)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Jim Thorpe

This reading on legendary athlete Jim Thorpe and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet are a couple of things I wrote initially for one student, but have found over time that this is high-interest material for students with a deep interest in the history of sport.

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.

7 Vowels

Alpha * Epsilon * Eta * Iota * Omicron * Upsilon * Omega

The vowels have always been linked to the seven heavens, most famously in Hebrew, where the seven unwritten vowels created the sound for God—Jehovah. The link between the language of man and the presumed languages of the seven Heavenly spheres has always been speculated upon. However, it is one of the more arcane secrets of the mystics which of the seven planets is linked to which vowel.”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

A Lesson Plan on the Tasting Areas of the Tongue from The Order of Things

Here is a short lesson on the tasting areas of the tongue, yet another derived from the pages of Barbara Ann Kipfer’s excellent reference book The Order of Things. To work students through this lesson, you’ll need this list as reading and comprehension questions.

Is this knowledge students need to possess? Probably not. These lessons are meant as confidence-building exercises for struggling learners. They deal with knowledge a little off the beaten track–often delivered in more than one symbolic systems, e.g. numbers and words–and give students experience dealing with new materials and ideas in short exercises.

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.

Term of Art: Parallelism

“Parallelism: In rhetoric, a device in which a formula or structural pattern is repeated, as in the Latin sequence veni, vidi, vici and its English translation I came, I saw, I conquered. It occurs in sayings and proverbs (such as Now you see them, now you don’t and Out of sight, out of mind) and in verse and poetic prose (‘My mother groaned, my father wept—/ Into the dangerous world I leapt’ (William Blake, Songs of Experience)).”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

The Grapes of Wrath

Alright, here is a reading on John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I just want to mention Sanora Babb’s novel Whose Names Are Unknown, which tells a similar story; in fact, John Steinbeck may well have helped himself to her notes when writing The Grapes of Wrath.

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.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

 Slaughterhouse-Five: A novel (1969) by the US writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr (1922-2007), drawing on his experience of witnessing, as a prisoner of war, the Allied destruction of Dresden by fire bombs during the Second World War. The framework of the book concerns Billy Pilgrim, who is transported by aliens through a time warp, enabling him to witness events in the past of which he has foreknowledge. So it is that, with other US prisoners, he finds himself shut up in a slaughterhouse (Slaughterhouse-Five) in Dresden when the city is bombed. An interesting film version (1972) was directed by George Roy Hill.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

Harvard

Anyone I’ve known who has dealt with the institution reported to me that its cachet is hypertrophied, but since it remains a brand in higher education around the globe, here is a reading on Harvard University and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. As for the school’s cachet, I have no experience there (other than walking around on its leafy, mellow campus), so I can’t speak to, well anything about it.

Nota bene that this is a short history of the university and its role in the development of colleges and universities in the United States.

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.