“The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where one question grew before.”
“Evolution of the Scientific Point of View” (1908)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Years ago, when I worked in a school that had a cooperative career and technical education (CTE) program, I served students either in such a program or on their way to one. I developed this reading on x-rays and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet for students interested in becoming x-ray technicians.
Then I never used it. For one thing, it is highly technical with a lot of relatively advanced scientific vocabulary. As the years went by the CTE program slipped away, and any modifications I might have performed to make this material more readable while making it more comprehensive went with the program.
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.
This isn’t a political blog, but if you followed the news on the national convention (or the convention itself) of one of the major political parties in the United States last month, you’ll understand why I think it’s time to post this Cultural Literacy worksheet on nepotism.
Incidentally, I doubt that there are many teachers in this country who haven’t attended a professional development day in which the importance of critical thinking was discussed. As Daniel Willingham asked in an article for the American Federation of Teachers’ magazine American Educator, “Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?” The answer is complicated, but a summary would go something like this: critical thinking is a complicated cognitive act involving, among other things, using a rich fund of prior knowledge and conceptual vocabulary to think synthetically in order to understand new and unexpected circumstances and things.
Nepotism, I’ll argue here, is one of those conceptually rich terms that gives students the cognitive tools to evaluate and navigate a variety of situations in educational institutions, workplaces, governments, and bureaucracies. It can also equip them to understand why–and yes, develop a critical understanding of why–institutions, businesses and governments develop inertia and dysfunction. In a time when our periodicals and television news channels carry daily news about toxic workplaces characterized by cliquish incompetence, nepotism is a word students should know so they can understand its conceptual meaning and use it as a tool for assessment of the dismal workplaces in which so many of us spend our lives.
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.
Here is a reading on Socrates, history’s first teacher, and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet: this is a core reading in all four of the common branch subjects, and a way of thinking about teaching and learning, for students’ and teachers’ edification.
Incidentally, if you’ve been hanging with William “Bill” S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan, as it was my mild misfortune to do over the Labor Day weekend, this Greek philosopher’s name is not pronounced “So-Crates” but rather sock-ruh-tease. Just sayin’.
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.
Alright, last but not least today, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on social mobility. I don’t want to get all Marxist about this, but this is really a concept high school students should know, especially high school students in struggling, inner-city schools.
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.
OK, moving along on a warm afternoon, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Picnic.”
I open this lesson, to get kids settled after the class change, with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the proverb “All’s Fair in Love and War.” You’ll need this PDF of the illustration, reading, and questions to conduct your investigation. Finally, to bring your suspect to justice, here is the typescript of the answer key for this case.
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.
Slowly but surely I am figuring out the new Block Editor on WordPress. So, let me try to add this reading on the Boston Tea Party and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. I imagine these materials will find a home someplace in a United States history course.
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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of the incumbent in public office. An election year seems like a good season to post this short exercise.
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.
For all the years I taught social studies classes, I used this Cultural Literacy worksheet on ideology, which is one of those overarching concepts that students can use to categorize capitalism, communism, or socialism–or any of the other ideologies we want students to recognize and understand. This is really a word students should know, and know how to use conceptually. This is one of the most basic terms of art in social studies–any social studies class.
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.
From Barbara Ann Kipfer’s The Order of Things, here is a lesson plan on the arrival and growth of teeth. You’ll need the reading with comprehension questions to complete this short reading and writing exercise, which, like all 50 of these lessons that I will eventually post here, is intended to help struggling learners experience mastery and therefore build self-confidence and competence in school.
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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