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.

Everyday Edit: Tuskegee Airmen

Here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on the Tuskegee Airmen. As I say every time I post one of these documents, if you and your students like them, the good people at Education World generously give away a yearlong supply of them.

And if you find typos on this document, well, that’s the purpose of them; edit and repair as needed!

Malcolm X on Self-Defense

“There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teachers us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That’s a good religion.

Message to the Grass Roots” (Speech), Detroit, Michigan, 10 November 1963″

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

Independent Practice: Mali

Here, to start the week on a Monday morning, and in observation of Black History Month 2020, is an independent practice worksheet on Mali.

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.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (and Paul Laurence Dunbar)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A volume of memoirs (1970) by the African-American writer, singer, and actress Maya Angelou (1928-2014). Angelou borrowed her title—a metaphor for the African-American experience—from the US writer Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906):

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore—

When he beats his bars and he would be free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—

I know why the caged bird sings!

Paul Lawrence Dunbar: ‘Sympathy,’ in The Complete Poems (1895)

Dunbar may have been inspired by an earlier line:

When caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.

John Webster: The White Devil (1612), V.iv

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

Cultural Literacy: James Weldon Johnson

Allow me to close out this Friday afternoon, and a difficult week, with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on James Weldon Johnson. He was a highly influential figure in the Harlem Renaissance, and it is nearly impossible to underestimate his influence on that efflorescence of culture in the United States.

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.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

[The beautiful Dunbar Apartments in Harlem are named for Paul Laurence Dunbar. Let me mention editorially that I am mildly uncomfortable with this entry’s association of Dunbar with Thomas Nelson Page. Dunbar, in my own view, was sui generis as a poet. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia has a tendency–especially in older entries like this one–to discount the originality of African-American writers.]

“Paul Laurence Dunbar: (1872-1906) American poet. Dunbar is noted for his highly skilled use of black themes and dialect. Writing at a time when literary regionalism was in vogue, he was undoubtedly influenced by Thomas Nelson Page. Dunbar was the son of a slave, but became the most famous African-American poet of his time. He exercised a great influence on later writers. Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896) is his most famous collection. It was followed by Lyrics of the Hearthside (1899), Lyrics of Love and Laughter (1903), and Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow. He also wrote novels, including The Uncalled (1898) and The Sport of the Gods (1902).”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Everyday Edit: Hank Aaron

Here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on Hank Aaron. If you and your students like this worksheet, the generous proprietors of Education World, who give away a year’s supply of them at their website.

If you find typos on this worksheet, that’s the point of the work. Ask students to proofread for errors, and then repair them.

Independent Practice: Songhai Empire

OK, folks tomorrow begins Black History Month 2020. Circumstances impel me, as they do every February, to editorialize briefly in saying that if Americans are honest with themselves about the history of the United States, then every month is Black History Month. That said, I am distinctly uncomfortable second-guessing the founders of Black History Month, particularly Dr. Carter G. Woodson.

So, let’s start the month off with this independent practice worksheet on the Songhai Empire.

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.

Rotten Reviews: William Shakespeare

“Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down. He had no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from old novels, and threw their stories into a dramatic shape, at as little expense or thought as you or I could turn his plays back again into prose tales.”

Lord Byron, letter to James Hogg 1814

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998. 

The Weekly Text, January 31, 2019: A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Windy Beach”

This week’s Text is a complete lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Windy Beach.”

I begin this unit with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the American idiom “High Horse”–as in “Get off your high horse.” This scan of the illustration and questions about the case is really the center of the lesson. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key to solve the case.

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.