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.

Bellevue Hospital

Working in New York City, I often use this reading on Bellevue Hospital and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet as make-up work for students who had fallen behind due to extended absences. To some, it was high-interest material, particularly those whose health needs had occasioned visit to that venerable  institution.

Did you know it was the first hospital in the United States to offer ambulance services? I always tried to ask students a couple of Socratic questions that would lead them to an understanding of the intransitive verb ambulate (i.e. “to move from place to place; WALK”), so that they understood that a person in need of an ambulance could not ove under their own power–hence the need for an ambulance.

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.

Malcolm Forbes on Education

“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”

Malcolm S. Forbes (1919-1990)

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

7 Sages of Ancient Greece

 “Thales of Miletus * Biasof Priene * Heraclitus of Ephesus * Cleobolus of Lindos * Solon of Athens * Pittacus of Mytilene * Periander of Corinth

This is an acceptable list, though there are many variants, not least because the great kings of antiquity liked to keep seven sages—in Greek hepta sophoi, in Latin septem sapientes—around their courts.

There also seem to have been competitions for sage advice in verse, which allowed various pantheons of seven sages to be formed. This was especially true of the Pythian Games held in honour of Apollo, the god of wisdom. Some of the most pithy couplets were then carved on the porch of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The two best known, as reported by that great guidebook writer Pausanias, are ‘Know thyself’ and ‘Nothing in excess.’”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

Word Root Exercise: Gon, Gonio

Moving right along on this chilly Sunday afternoon, here is a word root worksheet worksheet on the Greek roots gon and gonio. Math teachers, you know these roots–which mean angle–because they show up in words like pentagon and polygon. These are, needless to say, very productive roots in English.

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.

Everyday Edit: Ida B. Wells

Here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on Ida B. Wells, the estimable journalist and civil rights activist. If you like this, and would like to use Everyday Edits in your teaching practice, head on over to Education World, where the good people who operate that site give away a twelve-month supply of them.

If you find typos and errors in this document, don’t notify me, because I can’t do anything with this PDF. Instead, fix them! That’s the purpose of the document.

Write It Right: Necessaries for Means

“Necessaries for Means. ‘Bread and meat are necessaries of life.’ Not so; they are the mere means, for one can, and many do, live comfortably without them. Food and drink are necessaries of life, but particular kinds of food and drink are not.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

Anna Akhmatova on the Stalinist Purge Years

“In those years only the dead smiled, glad to be at rest.”

Anna Akhmatova

Requiem “Prologue”

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

Term of Art: Exposition

“Exposition: At the beginning of his play the dramatist is often committed to giving a certain amount of essential information about the plot and the events which are to come. He may also have to give information about what has “already happened”. All this comes under the heading of exposition. A skillful dramatist is able to introduce this material without holding up the action of the play and without recourse to the obvious devices of narrative. See also PROSTATIC CHARACTER.”

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

Term of Art: Recall

recall: Political process similar to reselection, except that the local party can demand a representative to appear before it and explain its actions whenever it chooses, that is, during the lifetime of a parliament and not only at the end of his term of office.”

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

James Baldwin on the Failure to Act

“If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: No more water, the fire next time!

James Baldwin

The Fire Next Time (1963)

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