Category Archives: Social Sciences

You’ll find domain-specific material designed to meet Common Core Standards in social studies, along with adapted and differentiated materials that deal with a broad array of conceptual knowledge in the social sciences. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Vince Lombardi

Here is some relatively high-interest material, to wit a reading on Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach, and its accompanying 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.

Lusterware

“Lusterware: A Middle Eastern luxury item brought to Spain in the late 10th century. Muslim artisans produced iridescent ceramic glazes that appeared as metallic silver, copper, or gold. In the 15th century lusterware tiles and dinnerware were commissioned throughout Europe by princes, cardinals, and popes. Decorative elements included their heraldic emblems along with Moorish signs and symbols.”

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

Document-Based Questioning Unit: Coda

All I know about this document that is ostensibly a DBQ exercise on ancient Egypt on ancient Egypt is that is was something one of my co-teachers used when I worked with him several years ago. I also know that it and the teacher’s copy of the same document were by themselves, without lesson plan or short exercises, in the folder that held the ten-lesson unit posted immediately below. And looking at them now, I think I know I never developed a lesson around this because I didn’t think there was enough primary material in it.

Rather than throw them away, though, I post them here. As with about 98 percent of the documents on Mark’s Text Terminal, these are in Microsoft Word format, so you can manipulate them to suit your circumstances.

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.

Aldous Huxley with Some Good Advice for Our Time

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Aldous Huxley

Proper Studies “A Note on Dogma” (1927)

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

A Documents-Based Questioning (DBQ) Lesson on The Popol Vuh

OK, we made it! This lesson plan on The Popol Vuh, the creation myth of the Quiche Maya, which brings us back to the first lesson in this unit on the Rig Veda, below. This is, then, the tenth of ten lessons (and the tenth of ten posts, therefore) in a global studies document-based questioning unit on reading, analyzing, and interpreting primary historical documents.

The short do-now exercises that I have for this lesson are arguable only tangentially related, but are useful parts of a general inventory of global studies work. These are two Cultural Literacy worksheets: the first is this half-page reading and writing exercise on colonialism and the second is this full-page worksheet on Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary general.

And, lastly, here is the reading on The Popol Vuh with its accompanying comprehension questions to take teacher and students through the lesson.

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.

Term of Art: Syllogism

“Syllogism: (Greek “reckoning together”) Deduction, from two propositions containing three terms of which one appears in both, of a conclusion that is true if they are true. A stock example is: All men are mortal; Greeks are mortal; so all Greeks are mortal. ‘Men’ is the middle term. ‘Mortal,’ the second term in the conclusion, is the major term and the premise in which it occurs is the major premise. ‘Greeks’ is the minor term and its premise the minor premise.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

A Document-Based Questioning (DBQ) Lesson on the Magna Carta

As above and below, this DBQ lesson on the Magna Carta is the ninth of a ten-lesson global studies on reading, analyzing, and interpreting primary historical documents.

In my taxonomic system, I tagged this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concepts of checks and balances in government, but as a short document to get students settled at the beginning of the class period, this isn’t appropriate. It’s a full-page document that might be better used as independent practice (i.e. homework) as it solidly complements the reading from the Magna Carta.

This Cultural Literacy worksheet on the divine right of kings is a half-page exercise and a better fit to begin a class period. It also dovetails conceptually with the content of the Magna Carta.

And, of course, you and your students will need the reading from the Magna Carta with comprehension questions to teach and learn the lesson about political power from the Magna Carta.

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.

Book of Answers: Cambridge University Press

“What is the oldest existing publisher? It is Cambridge University Press, which was established in 1584.”

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

A Document-Based Questioning (DBQ) Lesson on The Pillow Book

Here is a DBQ lesson on The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, a text whose fame has endured the centuries. This is the eighth lesson on a ten-lesson global studies unit on reading and interpreting primary historical documents.

Because the word appears in the text, I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun self-satisfaction, a fairly strong compound. If you move into a second day with this lesson–given the historical importance of the text, as well as the numerous concepts it contains, it might be appropriate–then here is another context clues worksheet on the adjective hateful, which also appears in the text.

And of course you’ll need the worksheet with the reading passage and comprehension questions to conduct this lesson.

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.

A Document-Based Questioning (DBQ) Lesson on the Qur’an

As above and below, this DBQ lesson plan on the Qur’an which is number seven of ten in global studies unit on document-based questioning.

This lesson opens, especially if you need to get students settled after a class change, with this context clues worksheet on the noun compassion. If you take the lesson into a second day, or have a use for it in general, her is another context clues worksheet on the related noun mercy.

And here, at last, is the worksheet with reading and comprehension questions on a passage from the holy book of Islam, The Qur’an.

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.