Students use text sets to research a topic inspired by a fiction book they have read. A text set is a collection of multiple text genres with a single focus.
This collection uses primary sources to explore Louisa May Alcott's novel, Little Women. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.
The unit is focused on the examination of geography in terms of “place.” Students dive into inquiry to answer the compelling question, What is unique about living in Washington? Through this question students will understand where and why people live in Washington State. Students will dive into the regions of Washington State and define it through many characteristics. Students will ultimately choose a region to become an expert on and communicate what makes that region unique. Each student’s performance task product will reflect choice and build upon student strengths according to their skill set.
This video segment from Between the Lions features a catchy song that celebrates an important function of literacy: access to information. It also shows the wide world of print, and all of the knowledge that can be gained from it.
This lesson uses "Ben's Dream" by Chris Van Allsburg to highlight ten major landmarks of the world. Students research the landmarks and present their findings to the class.
This lesson pairs the reading of historical fiction with nonfiction to introduce students to the large themes of history.
A bilingual anthology of detective writing in Spain and the UK/US, with a preliminary study by Enrique Torner.
This work was originally first available online through the World Association of International Studies at https://waisworld.org/en/wais/publications/books
This art history video discussion examines Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's "Seagram Building", 375 Park Avenue, New York City (1958). Note: In the video I call Le Corbusier a French architect. This is somewhat reductionist since he was born in Swizerland and became a French citizen in 1930.
In Brazil, the term língua da gente (literally ‘language of the people’) refers to the way that people actually talk in everyday speech. And that, in essence, is the object behind this series. We hope to provide practical lessons that demonstrate how people really speak, and we do this by presenting brief, slice-of-life dialogs, which focus on some daily situation, scenario, or task that we encounter every day.
Each audio podcast, generally between 8-12 minutes, includes the presentation of a brief dialog, a line-by-line English translation, and more in-depth analysis of the pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and cultural content in the lesson. Discussion blogs also accompany each lesson, providing community interaction for comments and questions. In broad terms, the lessons are subdivided into three levels of difficulty: Beginning, Elementary, and Intermediate. Additionally we have a cultural show that covers current events and related social issues.
This video from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly gives a primer on the history and evolution of madrasahs, institutes of higher learning in Islamic studies.
The video "Femmes francophones, Pouvoir et developpement" provides insight on the evolving role of women in business and positions of power throughout the Francophone world. The activity accompanying the video allows students to shape their perceptions of the issues and achievements of Francophone women.
Magna Carta (Latin for Great Charter) is an Angevin charter originally issued in Latin in June 1215. The
Magna Carta was the first document forced onto a King of England by a group of his subjects in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their rights.
The charter is widely known throughout the English speaking world as an important part of the protracted historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law in England and beyond. Read a translation into English here.
Students compare the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald with the song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," then create their own poetry about a historical event.
Spark the engagement of English-language learners or reluctant readers with the graphic novel "Maus". The visual information provided by the genre serves as a support for reading and critical engagement.
Making and Being offers a framework for teaching art that emphasizes contemplation, collaboration, and political economy. Authors Susan Jahoda and Caroline Woolard, two visual arts educators and members of the collective BFAMFAPhD*, share ideas and teaching strategies that they have adapted to spaces of learning which range widely, from self-organized workshops for professional artists to Foundations BFA and MFA thesis classes. This hands-on guide includes activities, worksheets, and assignments and is a critical resource for artists and art educators today. Making and Being is a book, a series of videos, a deck of cards, and an interactive website with freely downloadable content (click on links below to download worksheets, activities, and chapters as PDFs and editable Google Docs).
This textbook was developed to meet two distinct yet related needs. The more basic goal was to respond to the paucity of teaching materials suited to the needs of U.S. learners of Malayalam, particularly at the university level. Though some materials had previously been produced both in India and in the US, including three sets of materials co-written by the author, none were at all suited to the needs and purposes of American university students. Some of the author is earlier materials were ad hoc in nature, while the 510-page course written for Peace Corps volunteers concentrated on language for daily social interactions only. Both the Peace Corps materials and most of the materials written in India were written in Roman
transcription, thus making no serious attempt to teach the Malayalam script or the skills of reading or writing.
The Malayalam ·materials produced in India by various scholars or teach~rs were not readily available in the West, and were moreqver designed for Indian learners for whom formal explanations of the grammar and culture are largely unnecessary, since many of the grammar and discourse conventions are similar or identical to those found in their own mother tongues. Thus the texts available at that time lacked much of what was essential to the Western learner of the language. A couple more sets of teaching materials have come out in: the intervening 20 years, and some may now be ordered via the Internet. A partial list of these materials appears in the prologue following lesson Twenty-five in this text. These books are, in
general, designed to prepare the learner to handle everyday living situations in Malayalam, and as such can be useful adjuncts once the present volume has been thoroughly studied.
This text was conceived and designed to go beyond social conversation to prepare the Western learner to use the language as a research tool. To meet this goal the skills pf literacy in Malayalam are essential, but this is only a beginning. It is also necessary to have some familiarity with the formal style of the language, used in most types of written matter and in platform and other types of formal speaking. This is still a need uniquely met by this text. The irony is that our student audience has grown and diversified, so that the textbook for the Malayalam classes here at Texas must serve two rather different types of students. There are still a number of graduate students who seek out Malayalam as a research tool for their academic work. fu the past dozen years or so the Malayalam classes are being taken by increasing numbers of second generation Malayalis who have either been born in North America or spent most of their lives here. They are normally undergraduates whose goals do not include doing academic research in Kerala. They are mainly interested in being able to communicate better with relatives in Kerala and their interest in literacy extends mainly to being able to
write letters to grandparents or other non-English-speaking relatives. The majority of lessons containing conversations with friends and family members in the book can still serve their purposes well.
The second need to be met by this textbook was that of a reference grammar which could be used by linguists to glean accurate information about various aspects of the Malayalam language such as its phonology, syntax (grammar), 'semantics, and discourse. This type of reference grammar could serve both specialists in other Dravidian languages, as well as general linguists examining a specific feature in many unrelated languages.
You may hear that Malayalam is pronounced the way it is written. It’s not. This document provides some strategies for pronouncing Malayalam that may be hard for those with no prior exposure to the language. It is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather to focus on common challenges for beginners. Familiarity with the Malayalam script and the basic sounds of each letter is assumed throughout.
For English speakers, the Malayalam sound system contains both familiar and unfamiliar sounds. The Malayalam written script is phonetic, meaning that you say it as you write it (mostly!), and syllabic, meaning that it’s based on an alphabet and the syllables you can make with an alphabet. Therefore, there is a good correspondence between written and spoken Malayalam, though colloquial speech often diverges from standard written forms. This guide summarizes the basic pronunciation of Malayalam letters and presumes that you have spent at least some time learning the basic written letters already. If you grew up speaking Malayalam or hearing it frequently, then this guide may not help your pronunciation much, but it may help you with spelling and a better understanding of the sound system.
What is sandhi? A dictionary definition would say something like “the euphonic combination of sounds to facilitate pronunciation, often also represented in writing.” Sandhi in Sanskrit means “joining” and it refers technically to different ways that words are joined together both when speaking and when writing. Making words easier to pronounce in speech happens everywhere and all the time. Consider the English phrase, “what do you” In some places, it might be said, “whaccha”; in others, “whadya”; and so on. Or, “I am going to” becomes “Imma go ta”; “Let me” becomes “Lemme”; etc. Clearly articulating or distinguishing each word is often inconvenient and the sounds are regularly assimilated in one way or another. When authors try to replicate dialect or speech in English, they often turn to sandhi to capture some of the spoken effect. Sandhi means standardizing these pronunciation changes also in writing.
For English speakers, the Malayalam writing system, or script, may look intimidating. It’s not really. It works a little differently and requires some memorization, but the script is phonetic, meaning that you say it as you write it (mostly!), and syllabic, meaning that it’s based on an alphabet and the syllables you can make with an alphabet. With some hard work, you can learn the script within a week and never look back.