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.

Corrupt (adj), Corrupt (vi/vt), Corruption (n)

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

For reasons that I’ll assume are obvious (given my best efforts to temper this, my little blog has taken a modest slide into political commentary of late, owing entirely to my frustration with the insanity and idiocy of this nation’s president). it seems to me a perfect time to post three context clues worksheets, the first on corrupt as an adjective, the second on the same word as a verb (which is used both intransitively and transitively), and, finally, on the noun corruption.

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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Thomas Szasz Comments Presciently for Our Current Circumstances

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.”

Thomas Szasz

The Second Sin “Science and Scientism” (1973)

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

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Star Wars

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, let’s get started this morning with this relatively high-interest reading on Star Wars and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Nota bene, please, that this reading is about the original 1977 film. That said, there is a lot of room here to expand this material: conceptually, for example, there is an opening for students to explore the business of Hollywood productions by looking at franchise films, as well as the merchandise they create and market.

Furthermore, the Star Wars series can be used as a way of exploring Manichean allegories in books, art, and film. If the Star Wars films aren’t fundamentally about the conflict between good and evil, then I apparently missed the point of the exhausting number of them I watched.

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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Term of Art: Propaganda

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Propaganda (noun): Information, doctrine, ideas, or rumors spread to promote or discredit a cause, institution, or person, especially systematic political persuasion; self-serving or proselytizing material. Adjective: propagandist, propagandistic; adverb: propagandistically; noun: propagandism, propagandist; verb: propagandize.

‘Each end of the political spectrum has, I suppose, its own favorite style of propaganda. The Right tends to prefer gross, straightforward sentimentality. The Left, a sort of surface intellectualizing.'”

Neil Postman, Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk.

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Independent Practice: Shinto

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is an independent practice worksheet on Shinto. Incidentally, if you are a fan of Marie Kondo, you may find in this worksheet the basis of her approach to simplifying life by exercising some discipline over the accumulation of possessions. I actually read her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, which I found helpful. I recognized immediately its underlying Shinto principles; so I wasn’t terrible surprised when Ms. Kondo mentioned her time as a Shinto shrine maiden.

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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Historical Term: Ancien Regime

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“ancien regime (Fr.. old government, old order). The governmental and social structure which prevailed in Europe prior to the French Revolution of 1789. Its main characteristics are taken to have been an absolute or despotic monarchy, based on the Divine Right of Kings and the rigid division of society into three orders—the aristocracy, the Church, and the Third Estate.”

Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.

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A Lesson Plan on Hesiod’s Ages of History from The Order of Things

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a lesson plan on Hesiod’s Ages of History along with its reading and comprehension questions. As I’ve mentioned previously when posting these materials, this lesson (and at least 30 others like it) are something I started working on just before the COVID19 pandemic scaled up and closed schools, and I lost my job as a public school teacher.

To reiterate (and you can read more about these on the “About Posts & Texts” page linked to just above the banner photograph on the homepage of this site), these documents aim to give students an opportunity to work with, and develop their own understanding of, moving between two sets of symbols, words and numbers, in one lesson. The worksheet can be contracted or expanded as is appropriate for the attention spans of the students with whom you’re working. These are, as you will infer, literacy development exercises.

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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Word Root Exercise: Ped/o

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Yesterday, I posted a worksheet on the Latin roots ped, pedi, and -pede; if you scroll down–it’s 12 posts below this one–you’ll find it. As that post relays, in Latin these roots mean foot and feet.

Now here’s a worksheet on the Greek word root ped-o. In Greek this root means, simply, child. As with its Latin counterpart, this is a very productive root in English, forming the basis of words like pediatrics and pedagogue.

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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Regionalism

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Regionalism: Now understood to be a movement within American scene painting. Protesting against the spread of European Modernism, the regionalists sought an authentic American style by concentrating on realistic depictions of the rural Midwest and South of the 1930s. The best-known regionalists were Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry.”

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

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Democracy (n)

Posted on April 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Again, if this context clues worksheet on the noun democracy isn’t timely, particularly in light of the president’s latest craziness, than I guess I don’t, after all, understand the use of timely as an adjective. For the record, I learned, after consulting my dictionary, that timely means, in one sense “appropriate or adapted to the times or occasion.”

So yeah, I stand by this document as timely at this moment in history.

And as long I as I am presuming to write things into the record, please remember that United States presidents do not have absolute power–in fact, no one in the government does. That’s why we have a separation of powers in our Constitution. At the risk of belaboring the point, let’s not forget that the founders of this country fought a revolutionary war against a British sovereign who liked to think of himself as possessing absolute power.

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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