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.

The Weekly Text, Friday 13 January 2023: History of Hip-Hop Lesson 6, Woody Guthrie, American Troubadour

This week’s Text is lesson plan six of the History of Hip-Hop Unit. I open this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Marian Anderson.

For the first part of this lesson, you’ll need this reading on Woody Guthrie with its attendant comprehension worksheet. For the second part, you’ll need the lyrics to “Pretty Boy Floyd,” one of Woody’s most famous songs, and this research organizer for short work on Pretty Boy Floyd which students use, along with some basic research on the internet, to understand the song and its origins.

Incidentally, and to my considerable surprise, the students to whom I have delivered this lesson were quite interested in the song, if not Woody Guthrie himself. For that reason, I have designated and so tagged this post as containing high-interest materials.

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.

Tom Lehrer on “The Truth”

“No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has ‘The Truth.’ To be an atheist is almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist.”

Tom Lehrer

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

Term of Art: Subtractive Bilingualism

“subtractive bilingualism: A description of a bilingual program in which students become proficient in a second language, which replaces their first language in the curriculum. Contrast additive bilingualism.

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

Cultural Literacy: Old Boy Network

OK, here’s another document I prepared for my sociology course, to wit, a Cultural Literacy on the concept of the old boy network. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one long compound sentence with a colon in the middle of it, and two comprehension questions. Just the basics, but it gets the job done of introducing the concept. Students may need case studies to apply this knowledge, of course.

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.

Matt Ritchel and Michel Martin on the Adolescent Mental Health Crisis in the United States

[This post appears to have drawn a lot of attention, so I’m moving it to the top of the site for another week so it’s easy to find.]

Last Friday evening, as I am wont to do at the end of the week, I was watching the week’s YouTube clips on the shows I follow. I stumbled across this clip from Amanpour and Company featuring Michel Martin and Matt Richtel discussing the adolescent mental health crisis in the United States. It served as a bracing reminder to me (which I seriously needed) of what young people have endured, and continue to experience, during the pandemic and after. Mr. Richtel, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has been researching and writing on the inner experiences of contemporary teenagers in a series in the The New York Times headlined “The Inner Pandemic.” If you’re dealing in any capacity with adolescents, I can say with considerable confidence that you won’t regret the twenty-minute or so investment of time this video requires.

The Doubter’s Companion: A Big Mac

“A Big Mac: The communion wafer of consumption. Not really food but the promise of food. Whatever it tastes like, whatever it is made of, once it touches lips A Big Mac is transubstantiated into the mythological hamburger.

It is, along with Perrier, one of the sacred objects of the leading philosophical school of the late-twentieth century public relations. Cynics often unjustly suggest that this school favors superficial appearances over content. Had this been the case, PR would have failed. Most people, after all, can easily recognize the difference between appearances and reality.

A Big Mac, for example, is not big. It doesn’t taste of much. It isn’t good for you. And it seems sweet. Why does it seem sweet if, as the company says, it isn’t laced with sugar?

What the philosophy of PR proposes is theoretical content (such as sex appeal, fun, individualism, sophistication, the rejection of sophistication) in the place of actual content (banal carbonated water and a mediocre hamburger). This is modern metaphysics.

Because public relations are built on illusion, they tend to eliminate choice. This is an important characteristic of contemporary capitalism. A Big Mac, like so many creations of PR, is a symbol of passive conformity. As Mac McDonald put it: ‘If you gave people a choice, there would be chaos.’”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

Cultural Literacy: Max Weber

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Max Weber. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of five sentences–one a longish compound–and six comprehension questions. This is another document from my sociology course. Please be forewarned that this is some abstract material that depends upon a moderate quantity of advanced prior knowledge. I sent this into my school during a week I had the flu; it needs some supporting material, or, alternatively, some text explaining some of the ideas. As this document is formatted in Microsoft Word (like almost everything you’ll find on this site), you can adapt it your the needs of your students.

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.

Term of Art: Teacher-Proof Curriculum

“teacher-proof curriculum: A curriculum that is presumably so well designed and so carefully scripted that it cannot be ruined by a mediocre teacher. Some curriculum designers have pinned their hopes on computer-programmed instruction as a possible teacher-proof curriculum that cannot be distorted even by poor teaching. Understandably, teachers find such curricula to be offensive and condescending. See also programmed learning.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

Obeisance (n)

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun obeisance. It means “a movement of the body made in token of respect or submission,’ “bow,” “acknowledgment of another’s superiority or importance,” and “homage.” This is not exactly a high-frequency word in English, but I have seen it pop up in more than one place in the various social studies textbooks I’ve encountered over the years, which is why I prepared this document.

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: Mores

This year, kind of out of the blue, I was delegated the responsibility of teaching a sociology class. I suppose it’s a good thing I have some knowledge of the topic, but I am still developing the curriculum as the school year proceeds. This Cultural Literacy worksheet on mores, thus, is a recent fruit of these labors. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that students, by the time they reach high school, ought to understand mores as both a concept and as a potential way of being in the world–especially if one consents to a society’s mores (i.e., as long as one is not agreeing to, say, cannibalism).

In any case, this is a half-page document with a reading of two sentences and two comprehension questions.

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.