Here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on African-American music. This is the last Everyday Edit worksheet I have that’s appropriate to post for Black History Month. However, if you’d like more of these worksheets, you can find them at Education World, where the generous proprietors of that site give away a yearlong supply of them.
If you find typos in this document, your students should fix them! That’s the point of this exercise….
“Mongo Beti: (Real name Alexandre Biyidi, 1932-2001) Cameroonian novelist, writing in French. Biyidi used the pen name Eza Boto for his first novel, Ville Cruelle (1953). Thereafter, as Mongo Beti, he published Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba (1956; tr. The Poor Christ of Bomba, 1971), Mission terminee (1957; tr Mission to Kala, 1964) and Le Roi miracule (1958; tr King Lazarus, 1971). Taken together, his novels present a picture of social life and attitudes during the French colonial period in Africa. On the surface, Biyidi’s novels are inventive and ribald, but they are also an insistent, satirical attack on colonialism, the misunderstandings it occasioned, and the tragic waste it produced. After a period of silence, Biyidi returned to publishing. Only this time, his work focused on the postindependence rulers and the terrible price ordinary Africans have had to pay under these regimes. The tone of these recent novels has become more serious, fabulous, and allegorical. These works include Perpetue ou l’habitude du Malheur: roman (1974; tr Perpetua and the Habit of Unhappiness, 1978), Remember Ruben (1974; tr 1980) and La ruine presque cocasse d’un polichinelle (1979), which is a sequel to Remember Ruben and has yet to be translated.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“In 1969 Steps, a novel by Jerzy Kosinski, won the National Book Award. Six years later a freelance writer named Chuck Ross, to test the old theory that a novel by an unknown author doesn’t have a chance, typed the first twenty-one pages of Steps and sent them out to four publishers as the work of “Erik Demos.” All four rejected the manuscript. Two years after that he typed out the whole book an sent it, again credited to Erik Demos, to more publishers, including the original publisher of the Kosinski book, Random House. Again, all rejected it with unhelpful comments–Random House used a form letter. Altogether, fourteen publishers (and thirteen literary agents) failed to recognize a book that had already been published and had won an important prize.”
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
OK, wrapping up on a Wednesday afternoon, here is a lesson plan on obsessive-compulsive disorder. You’ll need this short reading and this vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet to teach this material. If you want slightly longer versions of the reading and worksheet, they’re under that hyperlink.
Nota bene that this has tended to be high-interest material among the students I’ve taught over the years, which is why I tagged it as such.
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.
“Go Tell It on the Mountain: The first novel (1953) of the black US writer James Baldwin (1924-1987). The book has autobiographical undertones, and the climax is the religious conversion of a 14-year-old Harlem boy. At the center of the book are the boy’s troubled relations with his stepfather, a preacher of the storefront Temple of the Fire Baptized. Aspects of the slave era and of life in a dysfunctional family are recounted in flashbacks. The phrase ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’ appears in the refrain of an African-American spiritual:
‘Go, tell it on the mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere
Go, tell it on the mountain,
That Jesus Christ is born’”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“Analysis: A detailed splitting up and examination of a work of literature. A close studies of the various elements and the relationship between them. An essential part of criticism. As T.S. Eliot put it, the tools of the critic are comparison analysis. Analytical criticism helps to make clear an author’s meaning and the structure of his work. It is argued that analysis spoils an intuitive and spontaneous response to a work of literature. Those in favor of “deep” analysis content that, on the contrary, it enhances the reader’s enjoyment.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Here is a reading on the Lumiere Brothers with the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it.
The Lumieres, as you may know, are pioneers of filmmaking technology and cinema. At my current posting I serve a couple of students highly interested in photography; yesterday I developed a series of research worksheets for learning about still photographers. In other words, there is more material related to photography forthcoming and Mark’s Text Terminal.
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.
“Who knows when some slight shock, disturbing the delicate balance between social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the skyscrapers in our cities toppling.”
Native Son, bk. 1 (1940)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Until 1954 (i.e. Brown v. Board of Education), the United States Supreme Court was a reliable upholder of white supremacy. This Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Dred Scott decision helps students understand the precedent behind this illogical jurisprudence. It’s worth remembering that this was the case in which Chief Justice Roger Taney made some particularly trashy, racist comments in his decision.
For God’s sake….
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.
Since they are clearly popular, here is another lesson plan from the pages of Crime and Puzzlement, this on on the case “Tread Lightly.”
I open this lesson on this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Josephine Baker–an exemplary American, by the way. The illustration and questions drive the lesson. Finally, here is the answer key to solve the case.
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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