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.

Independent Practice: The Crusades

Here is a independent practice worksheet on the Crusades, which is probably useful for social studies teachers.

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.

Hagia Sophia

Here is a reading on the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and the comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. This is a key piece of Late Antique architecture in one of the crossroads of the world. It’s hard to imagine why students shouldn’t know about this building and this history it represents.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Mass Extinction

The horrendous heat here yesterday moved me to cull from my files and post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on mass extinction. It’s hard to see a time when, well, henceforth, this will not be timely material.

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.

Moore’s Law

“The complexity of minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year…. Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase.

Electronics, 19 Apr. 1965. This statement became known as ‘Moore’s Law‘ of integrated circuits and computers, predicting that the number of transistors the computer industry would be able to place on a chip would double every couple of years.”

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

Debate (vi/vt)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb debate, which is used both intransitively and transitively. I wrote this originally to attend a unit I wrote on Denzel Washington’s film The Great Debaters. Needless to say, this is really a word high-schoolers ought to know and be able to use–fluently.

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.

The Bloomsbury Group

A group of English writers and artists who gathered regularly in the Bloomsbury section of London before, during, and after World War I. Their unconventional lifestyle, socialist views, and aesthetic sensibility combined to give ‘Bloomsbury‘ a connotation outside the circle of somewhat precious snobbery. Central to the group were artists Vanessa and Clive Bell, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant; writers Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and E.M. Forster; and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Cambridge-educated and the artistic and intellectual pacesetters of their generation, they were devoted adherents of the philosopher G.E. Moore and were frequently joined at their ‘Thursday evenings’ by such Cambridge luminaries as Bertrand Russell and Rupert Brooke.”

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

A Lesson Plan on Geography and History

Earlier this week I read Jacqueline Grennon Brooks and Martin G. Brooks’ book The Case for a Constructivist Classroom. Because I was mostly educated by constructivist teachers, particularly in high school and college, I find the method salubrious and use it whenever I can. I prefer to ask questions and let students talk rather than operating my own pie-hole for an entire class period. So I have been gratified this week, perusing my first unit for freshman global studies, to find several constructivist lessons in it.

In fact, I posted one yesterday on the causes of history. That entire first unit is entitled “Cause of History,” and it is simply an attempt to induce students to think of history as a process rather than a set of facts to be mastered (and, alas, regurgitated in high-stakes tests).

So here is a complete lesson plan on geography and history. I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on the noun age (as in historical age). This is a discussion lesson, so if the discussion seems promising, and is leading to the creation of meaning among students, I will take it into a second day. If you see fit to do that, you might want this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Finally, here is the worksheet for this lesson, which is really little more than a note-taking template.

I want to stress that this is a student-centered lesson driven by the teacher’s Socratic questioning.

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.

Independent Practice: Niccolo Machiavelli

Can you use this independent practice worksheet on Niccolo Machiavelli? At my school, we teach him (never, alas, hitting on key concepts he represents, like “political science” or “political philosophy”) in the freshman global studies cycle.

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.

Graphic Arts

“The class of visual arts in which lines, marks, or characters are impressed on a flat surface, usually paper. These include drawing, engraving, etching, lithography (which are grouped with fine art) and also processes such as typography and printing, when they are intended for more than utilitarian purposes.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

Commodore Matthew Perry and Japan

If you teach global studies or world history, I expect you might be able to use this reading on Commodore Perry and Japan and the comprehension worksheet that attends it. When I taught sophomore global studies for the first time last year, I was surprised to learn that the curriculum the administration of my school prescribed didn’t introduce students to the key concept implicit in this material, namely gunboat diplomacy.

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.