“WPA: Works Progress Administration: (later renamed Works Projects Administration) This federal agency (1935-1943) established by the U.S. government provided depression-era relief to the unemployed by commissioning public works. More than 5,000 artists produced works ranging from monumental murals (Willem de Kooning) to documentary photographs (Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans).”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Hidden Curriculum: In education, the hidden curriculum refers to the way in which cultural values and attitudes (such as obedience to authority, punctuality, and delayed gratification) are transmitted, through the structure of teaching and the organization of schools. This is different from the manifest or formal curriculum that is subject-based or topic-based. Philip Jackson’s classic work on Life in the Classroom (1968) points to three aspects of the hidden curriculum: crowds, praise, and power. In classrooms, pupils are exposed to the delay and self-denial that goes along with being one of a crowd; the constant evaluation and competition with others; and the fundamental distinction between the powerful and the powerless, with the teacher being effectively the infant’s first boss. Much sociological research has been concerned with the undesirable aspects of the hidden curriculum, whereby schools are said to sustain inequality, though sexism, racism, and class bias. If, as Emile Durkheim postulated, schools reflect the larger society of which they are a part, it is not surprising that, for good or for ill, the hidden curriculum reflects the values that permeate the other societal systems that interact with education.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
“The Seventh Seal: A highly regarded film (1957) directed by the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007). A vision of a medieval land ravaged by the Black Death, the film impressed and mystified audiences around the world. The title refers to a verse in the Bible:
‘And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in
heaven about the space of half an hour.’
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
If you have by any chance showed “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to your homebound students, or plan to, then you might find that this reading on the Temple and the Holy Ark and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet complements that exciting film.
I’ve tagged this as high-interest material because when I have offered it to students while making its connection to the Indiana Jones movie referred to above, their interest was piqued.
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.
“The Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Saul Bellow only after Bellow had won the Nobel Prize, which must have seemed like being given a cup of warmed-over instant coffee twenty minutes after having drunk the world’s most expensive cognac.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, readings/research
Tenebrists: Michelangelo de Caravaggio and the 17th-century painters influenced by him who painted interior scenes, often lighted by candles or torches, having sharp contrasts of light and shade. Georges de La Tour (French) and Jose de Ribera (Spaniard in Naples) are considered Tenebrists. The words tenebrist and tenebrism were coined by later critics. See CHIAROSCURO.
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“At whom was Alexander Pope’s poem The Dunciad (1728) aimed? Published in several versions from 1728 and 1743, the mock-epic poem satirized bad writing and attacked critics of Pope’s poetry. In the final version, the king of the dunces is Colley Cibber, England’s poet-laureate from 1730 to 1757. Other targets of Pope’s venom were dramatists Nahum Tate and Lewis Theobald.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, poetry, readings/research
Here is a lesson plan on understanding and differentiating historical dates which I have actually previously posted on Mark’s Text Terminal. While this is a social studies lesson on understanding how we use numbers to count and describe historical time, it has an ulterior literacy motive in that it seeks to help students, particularly the many English language learners I have served over the years.
We use two types of numbers when we talk about historical dates, ordinal and cardinal. Ordinal numbers are adjectives that, as their name indicates, place things in order. So, when we use terms like fourteenth century, fifteenth century, and so on, we are using ordinal numbers. Similarly, when we say, respectively, the 1300s, the 1400s, and so on, we are using cardinal numbers, which are nouns and which we use to count things. These two types of numbers are different in English just as they are different in other languages. Because I didn’t initially understand the difference between these kinds of numbers, I struggled to understand the numbering system in Russian when I studied that language.
For that reason, I wrote this context clues worksheet on the adjective ordinal and this on the noun phrase cardinal number. These worksheets aim to help students understand the difference between these two types of numbers and their use in English prose. This is knowledge that transfers across the curriculum–to foreign languages, English language arts, mathematics itself, and, yes, social studies.
Finally, here is the combined learning support and worksheet 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.
“The circle is divided into 360 degrees, which is an attempt to create a perfect universe out of our slightly wonky one. For 360 can be neatly divided by 4 to make 90-day seasons, or by 12 to make perfect months of 30 days, or by 18 to make 20-day units. This perfect ordering of the world—the sexagesimal system—was codified by the Babylonians and still orders the world of geometry and time-keeping with 60 seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour.
Of course, the reality of our world was never quite as neat as those Babylonian mathematicians aspired to be, for a lunar month is actually 29 days 12 hours, and 44 minutes, not a neat 30, and a solar year (the time in which it takes the earth to orbit the sun) is actually 365 days, five hours, and 48 minutes, not a neat 360. So, in the old days, we made an odd thirteenth month of five days, before opting to spread them around to make some months 30 days long, some 31. And every fourth year we need our years to be 366 days long, in order to use up an extra day acquired by four additional units of five hours and 48 minutes.
Nonetheless, the perfection of 360 has always been aspired to, with ancient stone circles formed of 360 stones and altars formed from 360 cut stones.”
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.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged literary oddities, numeracy, readings/research
Here is a reading on the supernova as the death of stars along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. For the right student (and I’ve only taught a few of them, including the young man who requested these documents), this is high-interest material.
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 Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.