Tag Archives: readings/research

Prematurity

Posted on May 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

I worked up this reading on prematurity (in the sense of premature births) and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet for a student, and I think after that one use, it disappeared until today, when I found it in a far corner of my desktop. Health educators, is this something you teach about?

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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Urdu

Posted on May 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Urdu: An Indo-Aryan language of the Indian subcontinent, associated with the Moghul Empire, in which Persian was the court language. It is used especially Muslims and written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script. Closely related to Hindi, Urdu has a similar pronunciation and grammar but a more heavily Persianized and Arabicized vocabulary. It is the national language of Pakistan and is its co-official language with English. In India, it is the state language of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and associate state language of the state of Uttar Pradesh. It is spoken as a first language by c.30m and as a second language by c.100m people in India and Pakistan, and some thousands of people of Indo-Pakistani origin in Fiji, Guyana, South Africa, the UK, and the US.”

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

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Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

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Cultural Literacy: Two Worksheets on Rudyard Kipling

Posted on May 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

Let’s move along with a couple of Rudyard Kipling-related Cultural Literacy worksheets, the first a simple biography of the writer, the second a short but cogent analysis of his unfortunate poem “The White Man’s Burden.” If you teach global studies, or whatever your school district calls a broad survey of world history, the latter document might be useful in helping students develop their own understanding of the uses of culture to create, buttress, and therefore justify ideology, in this case the depredations of European colonialism.

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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Gilded Age

Posted on May 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

Alright, last but not least this beautiful spring morning is this reading on the Gilded Age along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I assume I don’t need to belabor the point that this reading could very well describe our own epoch.

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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A Lesson Plan on the Percentages of Chemical Elements that Compose Earth from The Order of Things

Posted on May 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is another lesson plan from The Order of Things, this one on the percentages of chemical elements that compose this planet. Here is the list and comprehension questions that constitutes the work of this lesson. If you have any questions about this material, please see the excursus on worksheets from The Order of Things in the About Posts & Texts page, linked to above the banner photograph.

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, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, Worksheets

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Ted Williams

Posted on May 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, baseball fans, I know it isn’t much, but perhaps you can take some comfort from this reading on Ted Williams and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

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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Term of Art: Stereotype

Posted on May 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Stereotype, Stereotyping: Derived from Greek (stereos = solid, typos = mark), and applied in the late eighteenth century as a technical term for the casting of a papier mache copy of printing type, the concept was developed by the North American journalist Walter Lippmann in his book Public Opinion (1922) to mean the fixed, narrow ‘pictures in our head,’ generally resistant to easy change. It usually carries a pejorative meaning—in contrast to the sociological process of typification.”

Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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Futurism

Posted on May 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Futurism: Chiefly an Italian literary and artistic movement, futurism stressed the dynamism of motion and appealed to young Italian artists to reject the art of the academies and museums. The first ‘Manifesto of Future Painters,‘ proclaimed in 1910 in Turin, was signed by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, and L. Russolo. Attempting to represent time and motion, these painters and sculptors showed multiples of moving parts in many positions simultaneously. While futurism was not directly associated with fascism until after World War I, evidence of right-wing political ideas and the glorification of war can be found in Boccioni’s States of Mind of 1910-1911.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Brooklyn Bridge

Posted on May 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

It was the biggest civil engineering project in the history of the world when it was built, so it has global significance. But whenever I post something like this reading on the Brooklyn Bridge and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet, I do so with my erstwhile New York City colleagues in mind. This is as much about the Roebling family, father and son, who designed and built the bridge–did you know that the day-to-day superintendency of the project fell to Emily Warren Roebling, the daughter-in-law of John Roebling, who began construction of the Brooklyn Bridge? There’s some women’s history to be extracted from this material for the right learner.

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, Independent Practice, New York City, Social Sciences, Worksheets

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Kubla Khan

Posted on May 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“”Kubla Khan: A famously unfinished, opium-induced poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), who had claimed to have written down as much as he could of what he had just been dreaming before being interrupted by the arrival of ‘a person on business from Porlock.’ Composed while Coleridge was living in Somerset in 1797-8, the poem was first published in Christabel and Other Poems (1816). It bears little relation to the historical Kublai Khan (1215-94), the grandson of Genghis Khan. Kublai led the Mongol conquest of China and made himself the first emperor of the Yuan dynasty in 1279. He was made famous in Europe by Marco Polo, who spent 20 years at Kublai’s court.”

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

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