Tag Archives: united states history

The Weekly Text, 3 January 2025: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Robert Moses

Posted on January 3, 2025 | Leave a comment

Happy New Year! This week’s Text, after two weeks off for this blog for the holidays, is a reading on Robert Moses along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Moses, you may know, was the so-called “Master Builder” of New York City.

If you’re interested in a critical, nuanced and not to mention thorough account if Moses’ impact on the Five Boroughs, I recommend–highly–Robert Caro’s magisterial biography of Moses, The Power Broker. Should you happen to be in New York City for the next month, The New York Historical has an exhibition on “Robert Caro’s The Power Broker at 50” at its museum at 170 Central Park West (at 77th Street).

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, New York City, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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Cultural Literacy: Sitting Bull

Posted on November 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

Last but not least for National Native American Heritage Month 2024, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Sitting Bull. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences, all of them relatively long, and three comprehension questions. For its brevity, it is nonetheless a surprisingly thorough introduction to this Sioux leader.

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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Shawnee

Posted on November 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Shawnee: Algonquian-speaking people from the central Ohio River Valley. Closely related in language and culture to the Fox, Kickapoo, and Sauk, the Shawnee were also influenced by the Seneca and Delaware. In the summer the Shawnee lived in bark-covered houses grouped into large villages near fields in which women cultivated corn. The primary male occupation was hunting. In winter the village broke into small patrilineal family groups, which moved to hunting camps. In the 17th century the Shawnee were driven from their home by the Iroquois, scattering into widely separated areas. After 1725 the tribe reunited in Ohio. Following their defeat by General Anthony Wayne (1794), they broke into three independent branches that eventually settled in Oklahoma. Today they number about 4,000.”

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

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Cultural Literacy: Sioux

Posted on November 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Sioux people. This is half-page worksheet with a reading of five sentences, one of which is a short imperative, a see-this, thing, enclosed in parentheses, with three comprehension questions. This worksheet, like a few I’ve posted here recently, seems a bit crammed to me. You might want to adjust it to a full-page document.

The reading, even in five sentences, manages to note that the Sioux, who call themselves the Dakota or Lakota, administered a beatdown to Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army at the Battle of Little Bighorn, and names three significant Sioux leaders, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Big Foot, who is also known as Spotted Elk, whom  U.S. forces murdered at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.

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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Sacagawea

Posted on November 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Sacagawea: (1786?-1812) Shoshone Indian woman who, carrying her infant son on her back, traveled thousands of wilderness miles with the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-6). Though she had been separated from her people for nearly 10 years when the expedition began, Sacagawea was instrumental in obtaining horses and guides from a band of Shoshone (led by her brother, Cameahwait) at a point when the expedition may well have ended. Her fortitude in the face of hazards and deprivation became legendary.”

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

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The Weekly Text, 29 November 2024, National Native American Heritage Month Week V: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Geronimo

Posted on November 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

For the fifth and final Friday of National Native American Heritage Day 2024, here is a reading on Geronimo 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.

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The Weekly Text, 22 November 2024, National Native American Heritage Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Pine Ridge

Posted on November 21, 2024 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text, in observation of the fourth Friday of National Native American Heritage Month 2024, is this reading on Pine Ridge along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

The Pine Ridge Reservation entered my consciousness in 1973, when activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) began the Wounded Knee Occupation. AIM had earlier, for almost two years between 1969 and 1971, occupied the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. I was dimly aware of that, but by 1973 I’d become much more aware, having read by then for the first time Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart and Wounded Knee. In 1975, members of the Menominee Nation seized the Alexian Brothers Novitiate in Gresham, Wisconsin; I lived in Madison at the time, and my high school friends and I followed these events with keen interest.

This reading pulls no punches about the role of the United States government in creating neglect and failure in the way it proceeded with establishing Native American reservations. The massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 took place at Pine Ridge. Enough said.

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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Chief Joseph Surrenders

Posted on November 15, 2024 | Leave a comment

[Speech of surrender at tend of Nez Perce War, 5 Oct. 1877:] “I am tired of fighting…. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead.

Chief Joseph, Quoted in Herbert J. Spinden, The Nez Perce Indians (1908)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006

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Cultural Literacy: Hiawatha

Posted on November 15, 2024 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Hiawatha. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and four comprehension questions about an actual person shrouded in myth.

When I reviewed this document just now, it looked, unsurprisingly, a bit crammed. It might be better revised as a full-page worksheet. If it happens that you are teaching Henry Wadsworth Longellow’s poem (i.e. the aforementioned myth, which in any case I rather doubt is much taught anywhere, anymore) about Hiawatha, “The Song of Hiawatha,” I imagine there might be a place for this worksheet.

Otherwise, I don’t know. I do know I can think of several English teachers I worked with who wouldn’t know either Longfellow or one of his most famous poems.

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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Anasazi Culture

Posted on November 15, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Anasazi Culture: North American civilization that developed from c.AD 100 to historic times, centering on the area where the boundaries of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah intersect. Anasazi (Navajo for “Ancient Ones”) is used to refer to the ancestors of contemporary Pueblo Indian peoples. Anasazi civilization is customarily divided into five periods: Basketmaker (AD 100-500), Modified Basketmaker (500-700), Developmental Pueblo (700-1050), Classic Pueblo (1050-1300), and Regressive Pueblo (1300-1550). As among present-day Pueblo peoples, religion was highly developed and centered on rites partly conducted in underground circular chambers called kivas. The best-known Anasazi ruins are the great cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde (Colorado) and Chaco Canyon (New Mexico).”

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

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