Tag Archives: readings/research

The Weekly Text, Friday 7 April 2023: History of Hip-Hop Lesson 9, The Black Power Movement in the United States

This week’s Text is lesson plan nine of the History of Hip-Hop unit, on the rise of the Black Power movement in the United States. This lesson begins with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Black Panthers. The principal work for this lesson is this reading on the Black Power Movement with its accompanying comprehension worksheet.

And that’s it for another week.

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.

Melanie Klein

“Melanie Klein originally Melanie Reizes (1882-1960) Austrian-British psychoanalyst. Born in Vienna, she married at 21 and had three children before undergoing psychoanalysis with Sandor Ferenczi in Budapest before World War I. She studied the psychoanalysis of young children, joining the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute (1921-26), and later moving to London. In works such as The Psychoanalysis of Children (1932) and Narrative of a Child Analysis (1961), she asserted that children’s play was a symbolic way of controlling anxiety and that observation with free play with toys could serve as a means of determining early psychological impulses.”

­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Amazon

“Amazon: In Greek mythology, a member of a race of women warriors. One of the labors of Heracles was to obtain the girdle of the Amazon queen Hippolyte. In another tale, Theseus attacked the Amazons, and they responded by invading Attica, where they were defeated; Theseus married the Amazon Antiope. In ancient Greek art, Amazons resembled Athena (with weapons and a helmet) and later Artemis (in a thin dress girded high for speed).”

­­­­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

The Weekly Text, 31 March 2023, Women’s History Month 2023 Week V: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Birth Control Pill

For the final Friday of Women’s History Month 2023, here is a reading on the birth control pill along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Once again, the editors of the Intellectual Devotional series, from which this reading is adapted, have done an admirable job of including–without, somehow, cramming it in–all of the salient facts, including Margaret Sanger and the United States Supreme Court decision, Griswold v. Connecticut, that made contraceptives available nationwide and therefore expanded women’s autonomy over their reproductive health.

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.

The Weekly Text, 17 March 2023, Women’s History Month 2023 Week III: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Florence Nightingale

For the third Friday of Women’s History Month 2023, here is a reading on Florence Nightingale along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Incidentally, have you read Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey? It was one of the long-neglected books on my reading list that I finally got to while under COVID-19 quarantine. I confess that I didn’t fully understand the book. I imagine the context of its time–it was first published in 1918–might have helped. The book itself, I gather, was a departure from the biographical conventions in the time in that it took a critical look at its subjects, including Florence Nightingale, rather then reciting a list of achievements that became, in their aggregation, a kind of hagiography. A rereading of the book would no doubt repay my effort. At the moment, though, I think I would prefer simply to watch Jonathan Pryce’s portrayal of Lytton Strachey himself in the fine film Carrington, about the painter Dora Carrington–like Strachey a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

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 Weekly Text, 10 March 2023, Women’s History Month 2023 Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Emily Dickinson

On this, the second of the five Fridays in March, which is Women’s History Month, here is a reading on Emily Dickinson with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Like so many of the readings from the Intellectual Devotional series that I’ve adapted for classroom use, this is a remarkably thorough biography–at only a page in length–of Emily Dickinson and her art.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Guinevere

OK, moving right along with Women’s History Month materials, here is a half-page Cultural Literacy worksheet on Guinevere, known, alas, mostly for being the wife of King Arthur. Perhaps this slim document–it contains a three-sentence reading and three comprehension questions–might spur a discussion about the autonomy of women and their accomplishments and identities separate from their male spouses?

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.

Louise Bennett

“Louise Bennett: (1919-2006) Jamaican poet and folklorist. Louise Bennett is a distinctive and challenging female presence in Jamaican literature. Writing in Jamaican creole, she was one of the first to challenge the cultural hegemony of the Caribbean elite, and has been a model for the experimentation in language and rhythms of contemporary Caribbean poetry. Her celebration of African-Jamaican culture and promotion of black cultural self-confidence is apparent in her major collections (Jamaica) Dialect Verses (1942), Jamaica Labrish (1966) and Selected Poems (1983). Aunty Roachy Seh (1993) is a more recently published work.”

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

The Weekly Text, 3 March 2023, Women’s History Month 2023 Week I: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Sarah

For the first Friday of Women’s History Month 2023, here is a reading on Sarah, the biblical matriarch and prophetess, with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I’ll hazard a guess that this will prove to be neither high-demand or high-interest material. Nonetheless, Sarah, as a major figure in the Abrahamic religions, is a significant landmark in women’s history.

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.

Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker (originally Charles Christopher): (1920-1955) U.S. saxophonist and composer, one of the originators of bebop and among the greatest improvisers in jazz. Born in Kansas City, Parker played with Jay McShann’s big band (1940-42) and those or Earl Hines (1942-44) and Billy Eckstine (1944) before leading his own small groups in New York. (A nickname acquired in the early 1940s, Yardbird, was shortened to Bird and used throughout his career.) Parker frequently worked with Dizzy Gillespie in the mid-1940s, making a series of small-group recordings that heralded the arrival of bebop as a mature outgrowth of the improvisation of the late swing era. His direct, cutting tone and unprecedented dexterity on the alto saxophone made rapid tempos and fast flurries of notes trademarks of bebop, and his complex, subtle harmonic understanding brought and altogether new sound to the music. Easily the most influential jazz musician of his generation, his chronic drug addiction and early death contributed to making him a tragic legend.

Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.