Tag Archives: readings/research

D-Day

I meant to post this reading on D-Day and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet last Thursday, on the 75th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Europe. In my end of the school-year haze, alas, I spaced it out, as we liked to say in the 1970s.

Better late than never, I guess.

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.

Albigensian Crusade

“(1209-1229) A crusade launched by Pope Innocent III against Waldensian and Cathar heresies in southern France and carried out primarily by northern French forces, Primary targets of the crusading army were the counts to Toulouse, Raymond VI (d 1222) and Raymond VII (d 1249). In 1229 Raymond VII submitted to the crown of France. When Alphonse of Poitiers, Raymond VII’s son-in-law and brother to the King of France, died in 1271, the possessions of the counts of Toulouse devolved upon the crown of France and southern independence was irrevocably lost.

The crusade revitalized Occitan literature and gave it a new impetus towards the exploration of the narrative, resulting in a flowering of the sirventes, verse and prose narrative works, and vidas and razos (short prose biographies and commentaries on troubadours and their poetry). The crusade is most vividly narrated in the 13th-century Occitan epic Canso del la crozada.”

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

War of the Worlds

The story of Orson Welles’ broadcast of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds fascinated me as a grade-schooler. I think I was first exposed to it in around fifth grade. But even at that tender age, I was surprised that people were taken in by it–but also sympathetic that they were. I remember trying to imagine myself in the place of the folks who thought Welles was delivering news, rather than a science-fiction story. I could, but only barely.

Any way, here is a reading on Orson Welles’ broadcast of War of the Worlds along with its attendant 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.

Les Fauves

“(Fr., the wild beasts) Originally a contemptuous appellation for a group of French post-impressionist painters who exhibited their work at the Salon d’Automne in 1905. They were so called because of their use of strident color, violent distortions, and broad, bold brushwork. Their leader was Henri Matisse; others were Georges Rouault, Maurice Vlaminck, Andre Derain, and Raoul Dufy.”

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

The Age of Anxiety

“(1947) A long poem by W.H. Auden. It concerns men and women who meet by chance in a New York bar in wartime; all are suffering from the modern malaise and feel guilty, isolated, and rootless. In a common dream, they set out on a quest through a barren wasteland. Hope in Christianity is presented as the solution to their problems. The title has frequently been used as a name to describe the mid-20th century.”

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

Steroids

Here’s a reading on steroids and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet if you want them. I hope that there isn’t a real need for these documents–because that could mean kids are using steroids, a scary thought.

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.

Blog Post 2000: A Trove of Learning Supports and Graphic Organizers

Here we are at Blog Post 2000. I have a number of documents to post, all from the first third of my career, when I was just figuring out how to assess students’ abilities and design instruction that challenged them, but didn’t frustrate them.

So, for starters, here is a learning support on the kinds of questions that drive research projects.

Next, here is a learning support on writing notecards for research papers. I don’t know if teachers still require students to keep analog note-cards in the real world, but the social studies teacher with whom I taught sophomore global studies in Manhattan at the beginning of this (2018-2019) school year still–to his credit–required them. Whatever you do in your classroom, perhaps this structured note-card blank will help students learn and master this task essential to the craft of research.

This sample outline learning support and this style sheet on using structured outlining blanks, you will notice, are basically the same material. The style sheet accompanies these structured outlining blanks.

Finally, here is a document I call the research paper in miniature. I use this document to show students, in essence, what a research paper is, why the authors of these kinds of papers must cite sources, and even ask them to infer the argument (i.e. the origins of rock and roll are in the blues and other African musical forms) from the paragraph they read. As I write this, I realize that I have a lesson plan to rationalize the research paper in miniature, so I’ll post that as a Weekly Text sometime over the summer when I have a chance to revise it.

That’s it. I emptied out the folder for Blog Post 2000. Now to start working on my next thousand posts.

Ty Cobb

He was a nasty and irredeemably racist piece of work, but he was also one of the greatest baseball players in the history of the game.

For that reason, Mark’s Text Terminal offers, with some trepidation, this reading on Ty Cobb and its accompanying worksheet for vocabulary building and comprehension.

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 Dead Man’s Curvature

It’s Monday, so let’s start the week with a Crime and Puzzlement Lesson Plan, to wit, number seven from the first volume of Lawrence Treat’s series, “Dead Man’s Curvature.” I start this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet idiom “Steal Someone’s Thunder.” Here is a scan of the illustration and questions that are texts for this lesson. Finally, here is a typescript of the answer key.

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: Achievement Motivation

achievement motivation: Defined as the need to perform well or the striving for success, and evidenced by persistence and effort in the face of difficulties, achievement motivation is regarded as a central human motivation. Psychologist David McClelland (The Achieving Society, 1961) measured it by analyzing respondent’s narratives; rather more controversially he hypothesized that was related to economic growth. Lack of achievement motivation was, for a period during the 1950s and 1960s, a fashionable explanation for lack of economic development in the Third World–notably among certain American modernization theorists. This thesis was much criticized by dependency theorists such as Andre Gunder Frank (Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution, 1969).”

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