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 the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Stradegy”

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

One way to introduce students to Antonio Stradivari and his prized musical instruments would be by way of this lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Stradegy.”

I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the idiom “Hit Below the Belt.” Here is the PDF of the illustration and questions that drive the investigation. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key.

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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Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz on Evolution

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

 “The eye of the trilobite tells us that the sun shone on the beach where he lived; for there is nothing in nature without a purpose, and when so complicated an organ was made to receive the light, there must have been light to enter it.”

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz

Geological Sketches (1866)

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

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A Lesson Plan on Alcohol

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here’s a lesson plan on alcohol. This short reading and this vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet comprise the work for this unit. If you’d like a slightly longer, and therefore more in-depth, set of these documents, click here and you’ll get to them.

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: Ad Hominem

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Ad Hominem To the man: appealing to the sentiments or prejudices of the hearer of listener rather than to his or her reason or intelligence; disparaging a person’s character rather than his or her sentiments; personal rather than substantive or ideological.

‘The boss knows all about the so-called fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem. ‘It may be a fallacy,’ he said, ‘ but it is shore-God useful. If you use the right kind of argumentum, you can always scare the hominem into a laundry bill he didn’t expect.’ Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men.”

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

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Historical Term: Imperialism

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Imperialism: (deriv. Lat. imperium, power). Acquisition and administration of an empire, often as a part of general commercial and industrial expansion. From the 15th century onwards, Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and Britain began building overseas empires. Modern imperialism, however, probably dates from the 1880s and the scramble for colonies in under-developed Africa. Marxism-Leninism ascribes the survival of capitalism and World War I to this late surge of European imperialism. Italy, Germany and Japan failed to acquire empires in the 19th century due to their late national unification or industrialization; they attempted to do so in the 20th century by war. The USSR had been described as an imperialist power because it had absorbed the formerly independent countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and had sought to dominated neighboring states, not only Warsaw Pact countries but also Afghanistan and China. US involvement in Southeast Asia and Latin America had also resulted in the USA also being termed an imperialist power.”

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

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Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

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Word Root Exercise: Phor, Phore

Posted on January 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

It turns out to be a complicated piece of language, but here, nonetheless, is a worksheet on the Greek roots phor and phore. These mean, variously, to bear, to produce, to carry, and state. As you’ll see from the English words that grow from this root, it basically divides its labors between the concrete and the abstract in language.

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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The 7 Liberal Arts

Posted on January 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Grammar * Rhetoric * Logic * Arithmetic * Geometry * Music * Astronomy/Cosmology

The Seven Liberal Arts divide between the trivium of logic, rhetoric, and grammar and the quadrivium of arithmetic, music, geometry and cosmology. The Trivium were the arts considered necessary for the creation of an active citizen of the ancient world, well educated enough to be able to analyze what was being said, check it for rationality and to be able to speak and answer in his turn. With the addition of the quadrivium by the scholastics of the early medieval age, the whole basic course structure and purpose of a university education was established—which was to create an aware citizen. The system endured, more or less unchanged, right through to nineteenth-century Europe.”

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.

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A Lesson Plan on Manic-Depressive Disorder

Posted on January 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a lesson plan on manic-depressive disorder as well as the short reading and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that are the work of this lesson. (If you’d like a reading and worksheet that are a little longer than these, you’ll find one under this hyperlink).

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: Rationalism

Posted on January 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

Rationalism: 1. The doctrine associated especially with the French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-77), and the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von. Liebniz (1646-1716) that it is possible to obtain knowledge by reason alone, that there is only one valid system of reasoning and it is deductive in character, and that everything is explicable in principle by this form of reasoning…. 2. The more general view that everything is explicable in principle by one system of reasoning. 3. A general commitment to reason as opposed to faith, religious belief, prejudice, tradition, or any other source of belief that is without foundation in reason. Rationalist: one who believes in or practices rationalism (1, 2, 3). Rationalistic.

Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

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Anathema

Posted on January 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Anathema (noun) An ecclesiastical pronouncement that damns, bans, or excommunicates the person so denounced; solemn curse or declaration of obloquy; unyielding condemnation; person or thing regarded as accursed, detestable, or to be excluded at all costs. N. anathemization; v. anathemize

‘Confiscate! The mere word was anathema to him, and he stormed back and forth in excoriating condemnation, shaking a piercing finger of rebuke in the guilt-ridden faces of Captain Cathcart, Colonel Korn, and the poor battle-scarred captain with the submachine gun who commanded the M.P.s.’ Joseph Heller Catch 22″

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

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