Tag Archives: readings/research

The Weekly Text, Friday 21 April 2023: History of Hip-Hop Lesson 11, Gil Scott-Heron: Black Power Griot of Harlem

Posted on April 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text, following in sequence, is the eleventh lesson plan of the History of Hip-Hop unit, this one on the late, great, Gil Scott-Heron. This lesson begins with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the National Association for the the Advancement of Colored People. The center of this lesson is this adapted reading on Gil Scott-Heron with its comprehension worksheet to accompany it.

This lesson also includes listening to two of Gil Scott-Heron’s songs, both of which are available on YouTube. Here are the lyrics to “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “The Bottle.”

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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The Weekly Text, Friday 14 April 2023: History of Hip-Hop Lesson 10, The Last Poets, Harlem Griots

Posted on April 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

Moving along with the History of Hip-Hop unit, this week’s Text is the tenth lesson plan, on The Last Poets. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Malcolm X. From there we proceed to the mainstay of the lesson, this adapted reading on The Last Poets and its attendant comprehension-building worksheet.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in the full text from which the reading above was adapted, here is a PDF of the master of the reading. I snipped this from a copy of Uncut magazine back when the Hip-Hop fanzines were still published in paper and available at the Borders on Lower Broadway (very near Wall), near the school where I served at that time and where I would pick them up. So, we’re talking, basically, about pre-2008, which is when Borders ceased to exist, a casualty of the financial crisis that year. I had a hell of a time finding the citation, but I am relatively confident of 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.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Lesson Plans, New York City, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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Flagpole Sitting

Posted on April 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

If not for the one request over the years for this reading on the daredevil stunt of flagpole sitting that was somehow in vogue in the United States in the 1920s, supply would at present exceed demand. The reading, interestingly, makes the connection between this risky and arguable peculiar activity with the unusual form of monasticism of Simeon Stylites, a Christian ascetic who lived in the late-forth and early-fifth centuries CE. Anyway, here is the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that attends the reading.

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

Posted on April 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

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.

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Melanie Klein

Posted on March 31, 2023 | Leave a comment

“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.

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Amazon

Posted on March 31, 2023 | Leave a comment

“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.

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

Posted on March 31, 2023 | Leave a comment

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.

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

Posted on March 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

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.

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

Posted on March 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Guinevere

Posted on March 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

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.

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