Tag Archives: readings/research

A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Music Hath Charms”

The statistics in the back end of this website report that there is interest among the blog’s users in the various Crime and Puzzlement lessons I have published here. My own experience using these has been quite successful, as the students with whom I have used them have actually asked to do more of them. Not to put too fine a point on this, but I don’t in general serve students who make it a habit to ask for additional work.

So, here is a lesson plan on “Music Hath Charms,” yet another Crime and Puzzlement case.

I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the American idiom “Life of Riley.” Here’s the evidentiary illustration and text that is the centerpiece of the lesson. Finally, you’ll need this typescript of the answer key and explanations of evidence to assist students in solving 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.

E.H. Gombrich on the Neanderthals

“The Neanderthals lived in a period that comes before history. That is why we call it ‘prehistory,’ because we only have a rough idea of when it all happened. But we still know something about the people whom we call prehistoric. At the time when real history begins, which we will come to in future readings, people already had all the things we have today: clothes, houses, and tools, plows to plow with, grains to make bread with cows for milking, sheep for shearing, dogs for hunting and for company, bows and arrows for shooting and helmets and shields for protection.”

Excerpted from: Gombrich, E.H. Trans. Caroline Mustill. A Little History of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Hausa

“Hausa: Chadic language, native to northern Nigeria (roughly from Kaduna northwards and some 200 km east of Kano westwards) and neighboring parts of Niger. Also widespread as a second language, there and elsewhere, and as a lingua franca across West Africa. Written in Arabic script before the 20th century, now largely in Roman.”

Excerpted from: Marshall, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Depression

OK, health teachers, maybe you can use this reading on depression and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that attends it.

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.

Art Brut

“Art Brut: A term coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet to characterize spontaneous and rough artistic expression of children, prisoners, and the insane. Dubuffet’s collection of art brut inspired him to reclaim untrained and marginal artistic elements in his own work. See naïve art and ‘outsider’ art.”

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

Monopoly

I played it quite a bit as a child and an adolescent, and I can still be tempted by a round of it today. If I infer correctly from the student interest I’ve seen in my classrooms in this reading on the board game Monopoly, young people remain interested in it. Here is the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies the reading.

There is an argument to be made for this game as a learning activity, which is why I have tagged it as differentiated instruction.

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: Belles-Lettres

“Belles-Lettres (noun): Fine or imaginative , usually sophisticated, writing that, however limited in general appeal, is an aesthetic end in itself, including poetry, drama, light essays, and literary criticism. Adj. belletristic; n. belletrism, belleslettrism, belles-lettrism, belletrist, belle-lettrists.

‘The fear, as in literary criticism, is that one will lapse, or will be accused of lapsing, back into the old belles-lettristic mode, than which it is rightly felt that nothing could be more deadly—though other things can be as bad.’ Michael Tanner, in The State of Language.”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

Book of Answers: Merlin the Sorcerer

“Where in literature did Merlin the sorcerer first appear? In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain [Historia Regum Britanniae] (1137). This Latin prose work by the English chronicler also helped build the legend of Merlin’s protégé King Arthur.”

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Battle of Lepanto

“Battle of Lepanto: A naval engagement in the Gulf of Corinth on October 7, 1571, fought between the forces of the Ottoman Empire and those of a holy league comprising Spain, Venice, and the papacy. Under the leadership of Don John of Austria, the Christians overwhelmingly defeated the Turks, ending their naval domination of the Mediterranean. Cervantes took part in the battle and was wounded in the left hand.”

It is the subject of a poem by G.K. Chesterton.

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

New Kids on the Block

They were huge in 1990 when I first began working with adolescents. Now I wonder if anyone remembers them. I know the Wahlbergs  (Donnie was a member of New Kids on the Block and his brother Mark enjoyed a solo career as a rapper with the group “Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch; both are now actors) have parlied their success in the entertainment business into a reality show and, of all things, a burger joint franchise called Wahlburgers.

I usually don’t mention such things on this blog, but I find the fact that Mark Wahlberg became a rapper ironic indeed, given his history of racist violence. He also appears to have confused the action-star roles he plays with reality when he made these idiotic comments about the flights that were used as terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in the United States.

In any case, here is a reading on the New Kids on the Block and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet if you have students who can’t live without this knowledge of this product of the publicity-industrial complex–a brilliant locution for which I thank the peerless journalist Ron Rosenbaum.

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.