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.

Word Root Exercise: Mono, Mon

Here is a worksheet on the Greek word roots mono and mon if you can use it. They mean, of course, one, single, and alone. These are two very productive roots in English, and show up in words used across the domains of the common branch curriculum, e.g monocyte, monotheism, monosyllable, and monopoly, as well as in commonly used words in social discourse like monotony and monologue.

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.

Term of Art: Rapport

rapport n.: A sympathetic or harmonious relationship or state of mutual understanding. The word was introduced into psychology by the Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), and the French psychologist and neurologist Pierre Janet (1859-1947) confined its meaning specifically to the relationship between a hypnotist and a hypnotized subject; then Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) eventually widened its meaning and described it as the prototype (2) of  the transference.

[From French rapporter, to bring back, from re-again and apportare, to carry to, from Latin apportare to bring to, from, ad to + portare to bring or carry]”

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

Vitamin C and Scurvy

For health teachers (and for social studies teachers who want, improbably, their students to understand what life on the high seas was like for English sailors, and how they came by the epithet “Limeys”), here is a reading on vitamin c and scurvy 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.

The Devil’s Dictionary: Hell

“Hell, n. The residence of the late Noah Webster, dictionary-maker.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. 

A Halloween Lesson Plan on Vlad the Impaler

While I have posted these materials elsewhere on Mark’s Text Terminal, I have not included (because I just wrote it yesterday) this lesson plan on Vlad the Impaler. He is the model for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He also offers a glimpse into the mentality of some of those European knights who went on Crusade in the Holy Land. His biography also offers some insight into the privileges and prerogatives of European nobility in the fifteenth century. And of course, there are his horrifying crimes against humanity, though they would not have been called that at the time (see “privileges and prerogatives of European nobility”).

Anyway, here is a context clues worksheet on the verb impale (it’s only used transitively). This short reading on Vlad is the center of the lesson. Finally, here is the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies the reading.

And with that: Happy Halloween! Go easy on the candy, eh?

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.

Helen Prejean on the Death Penalty

“[On her opposition to the death penalty:] People are more than the worst thing they have ever done in their lives.”

Sister Helen Prejean

Quote in N.Y. Times Magazine, 9 May 1993

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

A Lesson Plan on Culture and Religion as Causes of History

Last but not least this morning is this lesson plan on culture and religion as causes of history. I start this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun epidemic. This lesson is a brainstorming and note-taking activity, so, accordingly, you’ll want this (or some iteration of it you make) this brainstorming and note-taking worksheet for students to use.

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.

Term of Art: Caesarism

Caesarism: Governmental system similar to that established by Julius Caesar (101-44 BC) in ancient Rome, that is, a semi-popular system of dictatorship, the dictator being enabled to seize power by the support of the army, a party or section of the people. Once in power, the dictator preserves the outward democratic forms with impotent parliaments, rigged elections and manipulations of the plebiscite. The property-owning class has its privileges and power curtailed, but is still protected from the poor. Egalitarian sentiments are expressed and the dictator claims to derive power from the people. Bonapartism is a variant of the model. Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), the German political philosopher, held that Caesarism would replace democracy in the 20th century since it was a trend to emerge in all civilizations at a certain point in their development.”

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

Two Vocabulary-Building Worksheet on Aviation Terms

In response to student demand and therefore hot off the press, here are two vocabulary-building worksheets on aviation terms. I suspect this is both the beginning and end of this enterprise, but if demand for this material returns, there may me more of it.

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.

Gordon W. Allport

Allport, Gordon W. (1897-1967) A leading American social psychologist who became head of the Harvard Department of Psychology in 1938. His most significant contributions include a theory of personality which highlighted the self and the proprium, the latter defined ‘all the regions of our life that we regard as peculiarly ours’ (see Becoming, 1955); studies of the importance of prejudice as a historical and cultural, as well as a psychological, phenomenon; an emphasis on the importance of personal documents in social science (such as his collection of Letters from Jenny1965); and his championing of the ideographic method.”

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