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.

James Baldwin on Integration

Posted on February 26, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?”

The Fire Next Time (1963)

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

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Cultural Literacy: Chinua Achebe

Posted on February 26, 2018 | Leave a comment

It’s Monday morning, and here in New York City we’re just back from the Presidents’ Day Week break. Here, to start of the week–and post the first of the final three entries for Black History Month 2018–is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Chinua Achebe.

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.

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Dr. King on Human Development and Social Change

Posted on February 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

“It is historically and biologically true that there can be no birth and growth without birth and growing pains. Whenever there is the emergence of the new we confront the recalcitrance of the old. So the tensions we witness in the world today are indicative of the fact that a new world order is being born and an old order is passing away.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., Address at First Annual Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change, Montgomery, Alabama, 3 December 1956

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

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The Weekly Text, February 23, 2018, Black History Month 2018, Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Posted on February 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

This is the last Friday of Black History Month, 2018, so this is by definition the final Weekly Text for the month. I’m actually publishing this from my phone, since I am away from New York (but on an Amtrak train on my way back right this minute).

Here is a reading on Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the great men of my lifetime. You might be able to use this comprehension sheet which accompanies the reading. Finally, here is an Everyday Edit on Martin Luther King, Jr. (and you can get lots more Everyday Edits from the good people at Education 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.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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Malcolm X on Subject and Object

Posted on February 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

“We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters, Plymouth Rock landed on us.”

Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

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

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Cultural Literacy: Nelson Mandela

Posted on February 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy Worksheet on Nelson Mandela. I miss him. He is someone everyone in the world should know about.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Jazz

Posted on February 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

You might find that this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Jazz nicely complements the post on the late, great Clifford Brown above it. “Brownie,” as his friends and colleagues called him, was a major influence in the genre and still an unmitigated joy to hear.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Spirituals

Posted on February 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

Since we as a society have decided that music education is somehow superfluous to the edification of children, I don’t know whether you’ll be able to use this Cultural Literacy worksheet on spirituals. I hope so.

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.

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W.E.B. Du Bois on Divided Consciousness

Posted on February 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

“One never feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, –this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost.”

W.E.B. Du Bois, “Strivings of the Negro People” (1897)

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

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Cultural Literacy: W.E.B. Du Bois

Posted on February 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

This Cultural Literacy Worksheet on W.E.B. Du Bois should probably be a mainstay of any Black History Month instruction.

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.

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

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