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.

A Lesson Plan on Admission of States to the Union from The Order of Things

OK, before I return to a really trashy thriller I have the bad judgement to read, here is a lesson plan on the admission on the admission–or readmission after the Civil War–of states to the United States. Here also is the worksheet at the center of this lesson.

The material I have adapted from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s The World of Order and Organization; How Things Are Arranged into Hierarchies, Structures, and Pecking Orders (New York: Random House, 1997)–the original copy I possessed of the book not long after it was published was called simply The Order of Things, hence the title of the unit–and written into lessons and worksheets is something brand new at Mark’s Text Terminal. I used only a few of them in the classroom. Since it is unlikely that I will teach at the secondary level in public schools again, these are untested. I’ll post them anyway; a rationale, and my thinking toward that rationale, for their use can be found on the “About Posts & Texts” page, linked to just above the banner photograph but below the banner itself.

Please allow me to dilate on the statement below: like just about everything on Mark’s Text Terminal, these are Microsoft Word documents. That means you can alter and adapt them to your needs. If you use these materials and find them effective, I would be much obliged for your comments. And please keep in mind that if these are useful educational instruments, I will be much more likely to produce more of them–and post them here.

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.

Folk Art

“Folk Art: The arts of peasant societies, both past and present. Characterized by naïve subject matter and a vivacious style, folk art both perpetuates very ancient decorative traditions and draws selectively from art forms of sophisticated cultural traditions, e.g. the adaptation of 18th-century Rococo motifs in European folk art. Paintings, sculpture, ceramics, metalwork, costume, needlework, implements and tools all may be folk art. See NAÏVE and OUTSIDER ART.”

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

Term of Art: Atypical Learner

“atypical learner: A general term for a child who is different from the typical student in physical, intellectual, social, or emotional development, and who differs in mental characteristics, sensory abilities, communication abilities, or social behavior to the extent that special education services are required for that child to develop.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Cultural Literacy: Dyslexia

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on dyslexia. I can think of several uses for this, including basic instruction in literacy. Your call.

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.

Deduce (vt)

Alright, here is a context clues worksheet on the verb deduce, which is only used transitively. Without getting into a major discussion on the validity of deduction as a means of analysis and cognition, I will say that I consider it inarguable that high school students should know this word and the concept it represents–i.e. a mode of thinking and analysis.

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.

Historical Term: Activists

activists Members of a political group prepared to take action as opposed to those whose membership is passive, involving only, for example, payment of membership fees. In the 1960s and early 1970s the term was applied widely to those members of left-wing and youth ‘movements’ who attended demonstrations and rallies, usually against US involvement in Vietnam, or more generally against various aspects of Western capitalism.

In the 1980s, the term has been used in the UK mainly to describe members of constituency Labour parties who have sought to reform the party’s procedures and inject a more socialist element into its policies.”

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

Samuel Adams

Lest students think he is only a brand of beer and not a the proper name of a hotheaded patriot from Boston in the cause of the American Revolution as well as a founding father of the United States, here is a reading on Samuel Adams 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.

A Lesson Plan on the Latin Word Root Circum-

Alright, moving right along, here is a lesson plan on the Latin word root circum; it means around. It is, as this worksheet that is the mainstay of the lesson fairly quickly exposes, a very productive root in English. Moreover, these are words that are in very heavy use in educated discourse in this country, which is why your student or child should know them as well as the root at the base of them.

I open this lesson with the context clues on the adverb and adjective abroad. It is a conceptual antonym to words formed from circum-, and to the extent possible, the worksheet itself aims to hint at these words and their meanings–as well as the idea of an antonym.

That’s it for today. I hope you are at home and safe, and all young minds are engaged, wherever you are.

Godspeed.

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.

Credit (n), Credit (v)

Here is a pair of context clues worksheets on credit as a noun and a verb. As a verb, it is transitive only. 

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.

Theodor Adorno, Famously, on Poetry after Auschwitz

“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”

Theodor Adorno

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