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.

Cultural Literacy: Aesop’s Fables

Posted on January 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

Given the stunning decline in introspection and the pursuit of virtue in American culture, I wonder if anyone anywhere needs or wants this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Aesop’s Fables . If so, there it is.

Also, if you want to teach Aesop’s Fables, there are several lesson plans posted on this blog: just use Aesop’s Fables as a search term on the home page and you’ll find them.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , , ,

Book of Answers: Socrates’ Wife

Posted on January 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

“What was the name of Socrates’ wife? Famed for her shrewishness, the wife of the fifth-century B.C. Athenian philosopher was named Xantippe.”

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged ,

Arthur Schopenhauer on Amour Propre

Posted on January 16, 2019 | Leave a comment

“If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

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

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , ,

Write It Right: Forecasted

Posted on January 15, 2019 | Leave a comment

“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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged ,

The Great Gatsby

Posted on January 15, 2019 | Leave a comment

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , , , , ,

Pedant (n), Pedantic (adj)

Posted on January 14, 2019 | Leave a comment

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , ,

A Rotten Reviews Omnibus on Edgar Allan Poe

Posted on January 14, 2019 | Leave a comment

“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 Stephen, Hours 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged , ,

Cultural Literacy: Allen Ginsberg

Posted on January 14, 2019 | Leave a comment

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , , , , ,

Southern States Secession and Readmission Dates Learning Support

Posted on January 14, 2019 | Leave a comment

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences

Tagged ,

Paradigm (n)

Posted on January 11, 2019 | Leave a comment

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in English Language Arts, Social Sciences, Worksheets

Tagged , , , ,