SOC 100 | Intro to Sociology | OER Course Hub
A collection of open teaching and learning materials curated by BMCC faculty
“Coronavirus is a Disaster for Feminism,” by Helen Lewis — This is a good overview of the impact of COVID-19 on women, with reference to the second shift and gender pay gap.
The Second Shift (excerpt), by Arlie Hochschild — This is a classic sociological reading on gender inequality and can also be useful for talking about research methods.
“America’s Enduring Caste System,” by Isabel Wilkerson — This is a great excerpt of Wilkerson’s book published in the NY Times Magazine.
The 1619 Project, The New York Times — Another great NY Times resource, with many different articles.
This is a fun in-class activity in which small groups of students analyze children’s books as agents of socialization. You can do this by bringing books into class or possibly by having students visit the library and find a children’s book there.
Childrens-books-as-agents-of-socialization-2This is a useful low-stakes small group exercise that can help students learn how to formulate research questions and how different sociological research methods might be used. You can give students any manageable research “topic” but I find something related to college/higher education to work well.
Methods-worsksheet-1
This is a fun, low-stakes exercise that helps students understand Moore and Davis’s functionalist theory of social stratification. For in-person classes, I put students into groups of 3-5 and ask them to together “save” 6 people; for online synchronous classes, I create a Google Form and ask students to individually select their 6 people and then we look together at who the class has “saved.”
Sinking-ship-1Faculty: This is a quick writing exercise that can get students thinking about social class divisions. I like to use this as a way into discussing sociological theories of social class division (Marx, Weber, and Moore and Davis’s functionalist theory). For in person classes, students can free write on paper; for online synchronous classes students can put their responses into a Google Doc or Google form.
Instructions for students: Free write for five minutes a response to this question.
Why are some people rich and some people poor?
This is an essay that I assign early in the semester to encourage students to start to use their sociological imagination by thinking about how a daily activity they do is influenced by society and history. The questions/prompts below the assignment can also be adapted for an in-class exercise for students to do in small groups.
Sociological-Imagination-EssayPowered by:
