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.

Write It Right: Forecasted

“Forecasted: For this abominable word we are indebted to the weather bureau–at least it was not sent upon us until that affliction was with us. Let us hope that it may some day be losted from the language.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

The Great Gatsby

Several students in the school in which I serve expressed interest in the literature of the Jazz Age and Gatsby in particular, so here is a short reading on The Great Gatsby along with the vocabulary building and comprehension worksheet that attends 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.

Pedant (n), Pedantic (adj)

OK, one more thing on this very chilly Monday morning, to wit these two context clues worksheets on noun pedant and the adjective pedantic. A pedant is someone who “makes a show of knowledge,” so someone is pedantic when they are making a show of knowledge.

It’s worth mentioning that both of these words connote that the knowledge that the pedant shows off is often “one who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge.”

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.

A Rotten Reviews Omnibus on Edgar Allan Poe

“After reading some of Poe’s stories one feels a kind of shock to one’s modesty. We require some kind of spiritual ablution to cleanse our minds of his disgusting images.”

Leslie StephenHours in a Library 1874

“A verbal poet merely; empty of thought, empty of sympathy, empty of love for any real thing…he was not human and manly.”

John Burroughs, The Dial 1893

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

Cultural Literacy: Allen Ginsberg

From my sophomore year of high school on, I was quite taken with The Beat Generation. In the event that you have any students with a similar interest (I still stumble across one every so often), this cultural literacy worksheet on the late, great Allen Ginsberg might be a place for them to start in the pursuit an inquiry into the Beats.

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.

Southern States Secession and Readmission Dates Learning Support

Here’s another document I must have written on student request, because I cannot imagine why I would ever need this learning support for the dates states seceded from the Union during the American Civil War, as well as the dates they were readmitted after the War.

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.

Paradigm (n)

Alright, here is another one of Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Day rendered as a context clues worksheet on the noun paradigm. This word, means “a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly : a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind.”

Needless to say, this is a very important word and concept for learning and for categorizing knowledge. Students, especially college-bound students, really must know this word by the time they don their mortarboards and walk across the stage at graduation.

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.

Richard Feynman on Knowledge and Ignorance

“I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.”

Richard Feynman

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

Populace (n) and Populous (adj)

Here are five worksheets on the homophones populace and populous. These are vocabulary builders as well as usage guides. I guess there is not much more to say about them then that.

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.

Nirvana

“The Sanskrit word ‘Nirvana” means ‘blown out’: a profound peace of mind, a freedom from suffering, and union with the Brahma-like symbol for the universe.

As the Lord Buddha explains, ‘Where there is nothing; where naught is grasped, there is the Isle of No-Beyond. Nirvana do I call it–the utter extinction of aging and dying…That dimension where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; neither dimension of the infinitude of space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor stasis; neither passing away nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support. This, just this, is the end of stress.'”

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.