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 Glossary of Terms from Martha Stone Wiske’s “Teaching for Understanding”

Posted on December 16, 2019 | Leave a comment

Last week, after reading a few pages each morning with my coffee before leaving for work, I finished Martha Stone Wiske’s (ed.) Teaching for Understanding: Linking Research to Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997); yesterday I finished its companion, The Teaching for Understanding Guide by Tina Blythe (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997). From the latter, I cribbed this glossary of Teaching for Understanding terms if you’re inclined to use this planning and instructional framework.

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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Generative Topics in Teaching for Understanding

Posted on December 16, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Generative topics have several key features: They are central to one of more disciplines or domains. They are interesting to students. They are accessible to student (there are lots of resources available to help students pursue the topic). There are multiple connections between them and students’ experiences both in and out of school. And perhaps most important, they are interesting to the teacher.”

Excerpted from: Blythe, Tina, et al. The Teaching for Understanding Guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998.

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

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H.L. Mencken on Platitudes

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.”

H.L. Mencken

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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Aryans

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Aryans: The people of the Rigveda, who invaded Iran and India from the northwest in the later 2nd millenium BC, By one theory they were responsible for the downfall of Indus Civilization. Their language was an early form of Sanskrit, the most easterly of the Indo-European tongues, but the use of their name to describe other Indo-European speakers is to be strongly deprecated.”

Excerpted from: Bray, Warwick, and David Trump. The Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology. New York: Penguin, 1984.

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A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “An 8-Cent Story”

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

This lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “An 8-Cent Story” is the penultimate lesson in the first of the three Crime and Puzzlement units I wrote a couple of years ago.

This lesson opens with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the American idiom “Curiosity Killed the Cat.” Here is the PDF of the reading and questions that drive the lesson; 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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Atom Bomb

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

Moving right along on this warm and oddly muggy December afternoon, here is a reading on the atom bomb 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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Britannicus

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Britannicus: (original name Claudius Tiberius Germanicus, c AD 41-55) Son of Messalina and the emperor Claudius I, heir apparent to the throne. Through the scheming of his mother, Agrippina, he was denied succession to the throne. It is believed that Nero, his half brother, poisoned Britannicus at a banquet. The name Britannicus was given to him by the senate because the conquest of Britain took place at about the time of his birth. He is the subject of a tragedy (1669) by Racine.”

“Britannicus: A tragedy by Racine. The material of the play is derived from Tacitus. Smitten with Junia, the beloved of his half brother Britannicus, the emperor Nero attempts to win her; unsuccessful, he causes Britannicus to be arrested and poisons him. Junia escapes from the palace and becomes a vestal virgin. The play abounds in political subplots and marks Racine’s first challenge of Corneille on the older playwright’s home ground: political drama.

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

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Heresy (n), Heretic (n), and Heretical (adj)

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

Because they came up frequently in various social studies classes I co-taught in New York City, I wrote these two context clues worksheets on the noun heretic and the adjective heretical. I was going to comment that I probably should have written another one on the noun heresy, but a glance in the folder that holds all these documents reveals I already did–it’s under that link.

It’s hard to imagine students understanding religious history, and particularly the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

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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Rotten Rejections: A Barbara Pym Omnibus

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

[I think this Wikipedia article on Barbara Pym will provide some much needed context to this particular literary travesty.]

“An Unsuitable Attachment (1963)

Novels like (this), despite their qualities, are getting increasingly difficult to sell.

The Sweet Dove Died (1978)

Not the kind of thing to which people are turning.”

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

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Word Root Exercise: Terr, Terra, and Terri

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here is a word root worksheet on the Latin word roots terr, terra, and terri. These three roots, which mean both earth and land, are very productive in English–you may even have a terrarium in your home or classroom.

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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