Tag Archives: readings/research

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.

A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Buried Gold”

It was 52 degrees at 5:00 this morning here in southwestern Vermont, which sure felt like an harbinger of fall. It’s warming up slowly. I feel like, as I did in my late teens and early twenties, that I should be preparing to begin a six-week apple harvest. I can’t imagine, at my age, what picking 120 bushels of apples a day would do to my body and mind.

Ok, that said, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Buried Gold.” I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the proverb “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” This is often attributed to Shakespeare; in fact, it comes from the pen of the Restoration dramatist William Congreve from his play The Mourning BrideI actually posted this short exercise with a parts of speech lesson elsewhere on this blog, so be on the lookout.

Here is the scan with the illustration, reading, and questions that you’ll need to conduct your investigation and therefore teach this lesson. And here, at last, is the typescript of the answer key so you can solve your case and bring the offender to the bar of justice–so to speak.

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.

John D. Rockefeller

It’s nearly impossible, as awful as he may have been, to underestimate his influence on American industrial capitalism, so I think this reading on John D Rockefeller and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet are relevant in a number of places across the social sciences curriculum.

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.

Ovary

This reading on human ovaries and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet are the last two things, at least for the moment, that I have to post on the human reproductive system. Anyway, health teachers take note if you need something like this.

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.