“That this book is strong and that Miss Chopin has a keen knowledge of certain phases of the feminine will not be denied. But it was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the overworked field of sex fiction.”
Chicago Times-Herald
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
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“Recent war novels have accustomed us all to ugly words and images, but from the mouths of the very young and protected they sound particularly offensive…the ear refuses to believe.”
The New York Herald Tribune Book Review
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged literary oddities, readings/research
[The New Statesman and Nation was a British publication that resulted in a merger in 1931 between the New Statesman and The Nation and Athenaeum, and is now apparently known simply as New Statesman. In any case, it’s hard to imagine that any magazine in Britain could seriously say that the country, at the time of the publication of Richard Wright’s Native Son–1940–was “away from that particular racial problem.”]
“The astounding thing is that the publisher is able to send out with the book a typescript about the weight of a Tor Bay Sole entirely made up of favorable reviews from the American Press. Over here and away from that particular racial problem the book seems unimpressive and silly, not even as much fun as a thriller.”
New Statesman and Nation
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
It’s the second Friday of Black History Month. This week’s Text is a reading on basketball legend Bill Russell with a reading comprehension worksheet to accompany it. Mr. Russell was one of the first NBA superstars of African descent. Therefore he is no stranger to racism. This is likely to be a high-interest reading for a variety of students. I hope it is useful in your classroom.
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.
Elsewhere on this blog, I have written and commented on the issue of poverty and cognition. Friends and colleagues of mine across the country have complained that this is a forbidden issue in professional development sessions in their schools; administrators don’t want to hear about the struggles of poor kids in the classroom, preferring instead to flog the issue of educators’ “accountability.” If you been subjected to this (it happens, alas, in the institution in which I currently serve, as it has in others in this city where I’ve had the misfortune to work), you probably agree that the best thing that can be said about this discourse-ending trope is that it is tiresome.
It is also ignorant.
In any case, reading NEA Today, the magazine of the National Education Association over the past couple of days, I came across the union’s offer of this handbook on teaching children living in poverty or surviving trauma. I haven’t had a chance to look at it in depth, but it’s something I want to get out to readers of this blog. If you are working with struggling learners, there is a strong possibility, if not a strong probability, that they have been subjected to these social pathologies. We owe it to our students and ourselves to understand these challenges, and to use that understanding to improve practice.
It’s the second Black History Month at Mark’s Text Terminal, and I have four readings and comprehension worksheets lined up for teachers to use in February. Let’s start the month with a major figure using this reading on Haitian liberator and national hero Toussaint L’Ouverture. To accompany it, here is a reading comprehension to help understand him as a liberator in the vein of the men who drove the American Revolution.
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.
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged philosophy/religion, readings/research
Recently, while perusing an old Moleskine notebook, I came upon a note instructing me to “see Pattern Learning article from Facebook for possible blog entry–see article in email.” Given my often less-than-stellar organizing skills, I wasn’t surprised to find no such email about this in any of my folders that have to do with professional development or this blog.
Any teacher who has taken the time to think about it–which means most teachers, I guess (and hope)–understand that in the hierarchy of an educator’s responsibilities, assisting students in developing their capacity for pattern recognition ought to be near the top. Indeed, all the domains in which elementary and secondary teachers operate offer them openings to train students in they vital cognitive skill. For math and language teachers, this may well be item one on their agendas.
In any case, I went looking on Facebook for this article on pattern learning and language acquisition. I also found, for you math teachers out there, this nice little squib, replete with rudimentary lesson plans on understanding patterns as the foundation of early math skills. To take this one step further, possibly to the precipice of irrelevance, there is also this very timely article from The New York Times on “learning to see data”. (However, should the arts and crafts of crocheting, knitting and weaving interest you, you’ll find a plethora of articles on them under a “pattern recognition” search on Facebook.)
Simply put, learning to recognize patterns is the first step to language acquisition and early math skills. If students are to succeed at the secondary level of schooling, then at the elementary level they must acquire the cognitive instinct of pattern recognition. For those of us working at any level with early catastrophe kids, this means that from the first day we stand in front of our charges, we must begin the process of teaching pattern recognition. Indeed, at the secondary level, we haven’t a moment to lose in inculcating pattern recognition; the sooner we begin this process, the better for our students.
Over the years I have worked to develop materials that foster and reinforce pattern recognition. One instrument I use for this, which I am now relatively confident is an effective way to foster and reinforce pattern recognition–and build vocabulary at the same time–is the word root worksheet. To persist with this just a couple of steps further, here are a word root do-now exercise for ornith/o and a full word root worksheet for the Latin root aqua.
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 couple of months ago I posted a short piece on the the Intellectual Devotional series of books. I believe these books have great potential for use in middle and high school classrooms; I’ve used them repeatedly and successfully with struggling readers and learners in my own high school classroom, as well as handing them out for independent makeup to students who have fallen behind.
During the 2016-2017 school year I plan as part of my personal professional development to take a longer and more analytical look at these documents with an eye toward either incorporating some of them into existing unit plans, or developing new lessons or units around them. In the process of this endeavor, which to a limited extent is already underway, I’ll convert these readings from PDFs (I scanned them directly from the pages of the books) to Word documents. Once they are in a manipulable form I can edit and adjust them for students’ reading levels. It’s worth mentioning that the authors of these books, Noah Oppenheim and David S. Kidder, are excellent compilers and editors. If you find yourself editing their writing for your students, I strongly recommend conforming to their original outline in your edits. These are some of the most well-outlined readings I’ve ever seen.
When I posted my original exposition of the five Intellectual Devotional volumes, I wrote the authors in search of their permission to post an occasional article from their books. I never heard back. I’m going to stick my neck out, and for this week’s text here is an Intellectual Devotional reading on the Black Death in Word format, so you can edit it, change the typeface, or whatever else best suits the students you serve. In addition, here is a reading comprehension worksheet to accompany the Black Death reading above. Eventually, I’ll incorporate these two documents into a lesson on writing essays for high-stakes exams. I’ll very likely end up posting that here as well.
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.
“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”
John Ruskin (1819-1900)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
Posted in Quotes
Tagged art/architecture/design, philosophy/religion, readings/research
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