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.

Bellwether (n)

Here is a a context clues worksheet on the noun bellwether. It’s a commonly used word, and high school students, I imagine most people would agree, ought to know it.

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: Uncle Sam

July 4th seems to me the perfect time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Uncle Sam.

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.

A Text for Independence Day 2017: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Declaration of Independence

Over the summer vacation, I’ll be away from my computer for three Fridays. I’ve decided to post those missing Weekly Texts over the next couple of weeks.

Here, on the Fourth of July, is an Intellectual Devotional Reading on the Declaration of Indepedence and a comprehension worksheet to complement 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.

Cultural Literacy: Mecca

Here is a Cultural Literacy Worksheet on Mecca, which might be handy in the toolbox of any global studies teacher.

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.

Architecture (n)

If your students don’t already know the word (or perhaps need their memories refreshed), you might find this context clues worksheet on the noun architecture useful.

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.

George Bernard Shaw on the Dismal Science and Its Practitioners

“If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.”

George Bernard Shaw

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

Cultural Literacy: Nile River

If you teach freshman global studies, especially here in New York City, you may find this Cultural Literacy Worksheet on the Nile River useful this fall.

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.

Mark Twain on Civil Liberties

“In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.”

Mark Twain

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

A Short Exercise on the Greek Word Root Pseud/o

This worksheet on the Greek word root pseud/o seems to me de rigeur for the high school classroom. It is a very productive root which means, of course, false. This root is easily appended to many nouns, which makes it possible for us to call someone like the presidential advisor “Dr.” Sebastian Gorka a pseudointellectual.

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.

Rotten Reviews: James Russell Lowell Reviews Thoreau’s Walden

“I look upon a great deal of the modern sentimentalism about Nature as a mark of disease. It is one more symptom of the general liver complaint…(Thoreau’s) shanty life was a mere impossibility so far as his own conception of it goes, as an entire independency of mankind. He squatted on another man’s land; he borrows his axe; his boards, his nails, his fish hooks, his plough, his hoe–all turn state’s evidence against him as an accomplice in the sin of that artificial civilization which rendered it possible that such a person as Henry David Thoreau should exist at all.”

James Russell Lowell, 1865, from Literary Essays, 1890

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