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.

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Jerome Bruner on Literal and Metaphorical Inquiry

Posted on April 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

“As every historian of science in the last hundred years has pointed out, scientists use all sorts of aids and intuitions and stories and metaphors to help them in their quest of getting their speculative model to fit ‘nature’…. My physicist friends are fond of the remark that physics is 95 percent speculation and 5 percent observation. And they are very attached to the expression ‘physical intuition’ as something that ‘real’ physicists have: They are not just tied to observation and measurement but how to get around in the theory even without them.”

Jerome Bruner

The Culture of Education

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

Independent Practice: Clovis

Posted on April 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

At one point, Clovis had a role to play in the freshman global studies courses I co-taught in New York City; then he disappeared. He represents a number of key elements of early European history, not the least of which is the spread of Christianity into “barbarian” kingdoms.

In any case, I doubt this independent practice worksheet on Clovis has great utility in New York any longer. But perhaps someone, somewhere, might have a student keen to know more about this transitional figure. I’ve had more surprising and unusual requests for reading material than this.

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.

Hans-Georg Gadamer on the Nature of Understanding

Posted on April 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

“All understanding is ultimately self-understanding…. A person who understands, understands himself…. Understanding begins when something addresses us. This requires…the fundamental suspension of our own prejudices.”

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Truth and Method

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

Central Park East’s Habits of Mind

Posted on April 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

The Central Park East Habits of Mind

From whose viewpoint are we seeing or reading or hearing? From what angle or perspective?

How do we know when we know? What’s the evidence, and how reliable is it?
How are things, events, or people connected to each other? What is the cause and what is the effect? How do they fit together?
What’s new and what’s old? Have we run across this idea before?
So what? Why does it matter? What does it all mean?

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

The Clash

Posted on April 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

A couple of hundred years ago, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, The Clash liked to call themselves “the only band that matters“: indeed, it was emblazoned across the front of their towering record “London Calling.” Last week while on spring break, I listened to a podcast series on The Clash, hosted by Chuck D of pioneering Hip-Hop group Public Enemy (an inspired choice, by the way) on the streaming music service to which I subscribe. It brought back great memories of a very different time in this world of ours.

Here is a reading on The Clash and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. When I’ve given this to alienated students to read, it has aroused, almost to a one, their interest. Whatever you think of punk rock and The Clash, there is no doubt that their music carries a message of rebellion and its concomitant, hope and action to create a better, more just world.

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.

Howard Gardner III: On Signs of Understanding

Posted on April 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

“An important symptom of an emerging understanding is the capacity to represent a problem in a number of different ways and to approach its solution from varied vantage points; a single, rigid representation is unlikely to suffice.”

Howard Gardner

The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

Word Root Exercise: Cracy and Crat

Posted on April 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

Here is a worksheet on the Greek roots cracy and crat. Unsurprisingly, they mean government, rule, and power–you know, like democracy, physiocrat, and kakistocracy.

Howard Gardner II: On Understanding in Action

Posted on April 24, 2019 | Leave a comment

“The test of understanding involves neither repetition of information learned nor performance of practices mastered. Rather, it involves the appropriate application of concepts and principles to questions or problems that are nearly posed…. Whereas short-answer tests and oral responses in classes can provide clues to student understanding, it is generally necessary to look more deeply…. For these purposes, new and unfamiliar problems, followed by open-ended clinical interviews or careful observations, provide the best way of establishing the degree of understanding…attained.”

Howard Gardner

The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

Howard Gardner I: On How Understanding Appears

Posted on April 24, 2019 | Leave a comment

“[By understanding] I mean simply a sufficient grasp of concepts, principles, or skills so that one can bring them to bear on new problems and situations, deciding in which ways one’s present competencies can suffice and in which ways one may require new skills or knowledge.”

Howard Gardner

The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

Hans-Georg Gadamer on Questioning

Posted on April 24, 2019 | Leave a comment

“It is opinion that suppresses questions. Opinion has a curious tendency to propagate itself…to question means to lay open a place in the open. As against the fixity of opinions, questioning makes the object and its possibilities fluid. A person skilled in the ‘art’ of questioning is a person who can prevent questions from being suppressed by the dominant opinion…. Only a person who has questions can have [understanding].”

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Truth and Method

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

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Category Archives: Social Sciences

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