Tag Archives: readings/research

Curtain Wall

Posted on November 12, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Curtain Wall: This non-load-bearing wall was first made possible with the introduction of the structural steel skeleton in the Carson Pirie Scott store (Chicago, 1899-1904). Years later, Walter Gropius acknowledged that in ‘modern architecture the wall is no more than a wall or climate barrier, which may consist of glass if maximum daylight is desirable.’ As a result, in 1925-1926, he created the workshop wing for the Dessau Bauhaus which became the precursor to the characteristic glass box building of the International Style. See bearing wall.”

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

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Iran Hostage Crisis

Posted on November 12, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and 1980 along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I remember these years vividly–I saw the first headlines about the crisis as I was passing a newsstand in the Miami airport en route to Jamaica. It was a fraught time. I have a minor quibble with this reading in that it minimizes the brutality of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, who was a genuinely nasty piece of work. And even though it is perhaps beyond the ken of this reading, it would have required little more than a sentence to mention that the Shah came to power subsequent to the 1953 coup d’etat in Iran, which deposed the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh.

The 1953 coup was engineered by both the United States Central Intelligence and the British MI6. In other words, as Dee Dee Ramone once put it, “Commando, involved again.”

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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Women Beware Women

Posted on November 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Women Beware Women: A tragedy by Thomas Middleton (1580-1627). It has not been established when he wrote it (some time before 1622), but the works was published posthumously in 1657. The admonitory title primarily refers to the character Livia (although none of the other characters is particularly savoury). In the main plot Livia distracts Leontio’s mother with a game of chess while the duke seduces Leontio’s wife, Bianca. In the subplot Livia persuades her niece Isabella that she is not related to Uncle Hippolito, Livia’s brother, so that mutual lust may be consummated. The corpse count by the end of the play is high. Apparently T.S. Eliot was alluding to the scene featuring the game of chess in the title of Part II of The Waste Land (1922), ‘A Game of Chess’, although the only reference to chess is in the lines:

And we shall play a game of chess,

Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

Middleton’s political satire, A Game at Chess, which he wrote in 1624, was also admired by Eliot.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Annual Health Exam

Posted on November 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

OK, health teachers, if you can use them, here is a reading on the importance of an annual health exam along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. For a one-page reading, this document pack in a lot of information–perhaps all that one needs to understand why one should get a physical every year.

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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Daguerreotype

Posted on November 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Daguerreotype: A product of the first widely used photographic process (1839 onward), named after its inventor, L.J.M. Daguerre. A daguerreotype is made without a negative by exposing a silver halide coated copper plate and then fuming it with mercury vapor to bring out the image, which characteristically appears in reverse. More popular than the contemporary calotype process, the daguerreotype was gradually supplanted after 1851 by the collodion wet plate process.”

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

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A Learning Support on the Literary Terms Poetry, Prose, and Prose Poem

Posted on November 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

In response to a student question the other day about the difference between prose and poetry–the prose poem “A Story About the Body” by Robert Hass was that day’s lesson in our English class and occasioned the question–I whipped up this learning support on the literary terms poetry, prose, and prose poem. This document is a single page with three short passages of text from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. It’s basically a glossary.

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 Mississippi River

Posted on November 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on the Mississippi River along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This is a relatively short reading, but packs a lot of facts into a short introduction to the Mighty Mississippi, as do most of the one-page reading from the Intellectual Devotional series. It’s one of the reasons I developed so many of these, and why you find so many of them on this blog.

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: Cossacks

Posted on November 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

Because I can’t ever remember hearing them mentioned once in 11 years of teaching global studies in New York State, I wonder if there exists any use at all, anywhere in the United States, for this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Cossacks. They are, or were, an important group of warriors and horsemen in Russia. Recently, they’ve made a comeback as part of a constellation of groups whose raison d’etre, as far as I can determine, is to extol the virtuous leadership Vladimir Putin and promote Great Russian cultural chauvinism.

This is a half-page worksheet with a symmetrical relationship between reading and comprehension questions: a three-sentence reading, and three comprehension questions.

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 Master and Margarita

Posted on November 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

“The Master and Margarita: (Russian title: Master i Margarita). A novel by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940), combining dark humor, satire, fantasy and philosophy. It was completed in 1938, but not published in Russia until 1966-7 (in serial form); the English edition was published in 1967. In the 1930s the Devil visits Moscow, and, with the aid of a naked girl and a gun-toting, cigar-smoking, man-sized cat, spreads chaos and mayhem and shows up the moral inadequacies of Soviet society. Standing apart from all this is the Master, a novelist of great integrity, and his beloved, Margarita. He is writing a book about the appearance of Jesus before Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, long sections of which are included by Bulgakov. The book is prefaced by quotation from Goethe’s Faust.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Blog Post 5,000: A Tentative Beginning to a Unit on Writing Reviews

Posted on October 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

In six years plus of this blog, I have finally reached the 5,000-post mark. Post Number 5,000 is a set of documents that I began toward developing a unit on writing reviews some years ago while working in an ill-fated middle school in the North Bronx.

For now, however, here are the basic, undeveloped documents for this unit. Here is a a tentative unit plan, which is still mostly in template form. Likewise this lesson-plan template and this worksheet template. Here is a a glossary of critical terms  for writing film reviews. This is a start on the first worksheet of the unit.

Finally, here is a list of aesthetic criteria for evaluating cultural products. Let me mention in passing that this is for teacher use; the one time I taught kids to write reviews, I made sure that they made, with proper guidance, their own lists of aesthetic criteria for the media or event they were criticizing.

You may want to check back here later, as I am in the process of developing this long-neglected unit.

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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