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.

Cultural Literacy: Dorothy Parker

Posted on March 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here’s a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Dorothy Parker, the great Algonquin Wit and (in my opinion) an under-recognized figure in American letters. If you or your students have an interest in Dorothy Parker, this blog contains numerous entries on her: just search her name on the homepage search bar.

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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Arnold Toynbee on Education as a Human Activity

Posted on March 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Education is a specifically human activity. Unlike other animals, man inherits something over and above what is transmitted to him automatically by physical and psychic heredity.”

Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975), as quoted in The Teacher and the Taught (1963)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

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Term of Art: Zeitgeist

Posted on March 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Zeitgeist: The characteristic spirit (Geist) of a historical era (Zeit). Eighteenth-century philosophers like Voltaire were intrigued by the idea of ‘the spirit of the age,’ but it was most fully developed by Hegel. Philosophies and works of art, he argued, cannot transcend the spirit or the age in which they are produced. Their expression is always symbolic and imperfect, and the progress of the human spirit is marked by the greater or lesser degree to which it captures the absolute spirit, or truth itself, beyond the limitations of any particular era. The term Zeitgeist has come to be used more loosely to describe the general cultural qualities of any period, such as ‘the sixties’ or ‘the romantic era,’ and does not carry the strong historicist connotations of Hegelian philosophy.”

Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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Culture (n)

Posted on March 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

I’m hard pressed to imagine why it wouldn’t a word every student should know as early on in his or her education as appropriate or feasible, so here is a context clues worksheet on the noun culture. It’s a big concept, so it probably deserves great scrutiny than this short exercise.

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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Everyday Edit: Jeanette Rankin

Posted on March 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

Moving right along this morning, here is an worksheet on Jeanette Rankin. I’ve been fascinated with Representative Rankin since I encountered her in high school. Here’s a chance to introduce her to your students while attending to matters of grammar, style, usage, and punctuation.

If Everyday Edits work well in your classroom, don’t forget that you can find a yearlong supply of them gratis from the good people at Education World.

If you find typos in this document, well, that’s the object of the exercise. Guide your students through their repair!

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences

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The Killing Fields

Posted on March 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

“The Killing Fields: A film (1984) based on the real-life relationship between US journalist Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian translator Dith Pran following the withdrawal of US personnel from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1975. The plot recounts Schanberg’s attempts to locate Pran after the latter is seized for ‘re-education’ by the communist Khmer Rouge. The ‘killing fields’ of the title were the paddy fields around Phnom Penh in which the Khmer Rouge executed their opponents. The part of Dith Pran was played by Haing S. Ngor, a doctor who had himself fled from the Khmer Rouge. In reality Dith Pran saw the killing fields himself only when he visited them in as mayor of his home town, long after the Khmer Rouge had been thrown out. The phrase has since become a journalistic cliché.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Woodstock

Posted on March 4, 2020 | Leave a comment

I’ve tagged it as high-interest material, but as I write this, I’m not sure I can say that with absolute confidence; in my day as a high school student, it certainly would have been. In any case, here is a reading on the legendary Woodstock music festival 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.

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Feminism

Posted on March 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Feminism: The progressive social movements of the 1960s produced their own academic and theoretical equivalents of revision and interpretation. The recognition of women’s historical oppression in a patriarchal society produced numerous reactions in the art world. In the early 1970s exhibitions that recovered ‘forgotten’ women artists began to establish a canon of great women artists. Judy Chicago produced The Dinner Party from craft techniques traditionally associated with women, such as needlepoint and ceramics. By using blatant female imagery, she and other sought to make explicitly ‘female’ works. By the late 1970s second-generation feminism coupled with a measure of psychoanalytic theory shifted the emphasis away from biological determinism to notions of self-identity. This approach was seen as more empowering, enabling both men and women to reexamine questions of gender and sexuality in contemporary art as well as in old masterworks previously rejected for their sexism. Contemporary artists working with this approach include Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman.”

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

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Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

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Everyday Edit: Eleanor Roosevelt

Posted on March 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

I need this morning to move on to other work on this blog, but before I do, I’ll publish one more post in its observance of Women’s History Month 2020, to with, this Everyday Edit worksheet on Eleanor Roosevelt. If you and your students find Everyday Edit work satisfying, let me remind you that you can find a yearlong supply of them under that hyperlink courtesy of the good people at Education World.

If you find typos in this document, thank the writer of them for showing students how to copyedit text; then fix them!

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A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “A Matter of Delicacy”

Posted on March 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

OK, pushing forward to blog post 3,000, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “A Matter of Delicacy.”

I open this lesson, to get young minds focused and working, with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Langston Hughes. This scan of the illustration and questions of and for the case drives the lesson. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key to solve the case.

Incidentally, I am just about to post a trove of supporting materials for the Crime and Puzzlement units over on the About Posts and Texts page, the link to which is just below the banner of this website.

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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