Fourth Grade: Contemporary World

Citizenship and Government

Economics

Geography

History

Ethnic Studies

Civic Skills: Apply civic reasoning and demonstrate civic skills for the purpose of informed and engaged lifelong civic participation.

Democratic Values and Principles: Explain democratic values and principles that guide governments, societies and communities. Analyze the tensions within the United States constitutional government.

Governmental Institutions and Political Processes: Explain and evaluate processes, rules and laws of United States governmental institutions at local, state and federal levels and within Tribal Nations.

Public Policy: Analyze how public policy is shaped by governmental and nongovernmental institutions. Analyze how people and communities take action to solve problems and shape public policy.

Tribal Nations: Evaluate the unique political status, trust relationships and governing structures of sovereign Tribal Nations and the United States.

Economic Inquiry: Use economic models and reasoning and data analysis to construct an argument and propose a solution related to an economic question. Evaluate the impact of the proposed solution on various communities that would be affected.

Fundamental Economic Concepts: Analyze how scarcity and artificial shortages force individuals, organizations, communities, and governments to make choices and incur opportunity costs. Analyze how the decisions of individuals, organizations, communities, and governments affect economic equity and efficiency.

Microeconomics: Explain and evaluate how resources are used and how goods and services are distributed within different economic systems. Analyze how incentives influence the decisions of consumers, producers, and governments. Evaluate the intended and unintended consequences of these decisions from multiple perspectives.

Macroeconomics: Measure and evaluate the well-being of nations and communities using a variety of indicators. Explain the causes of economic ups and downs. Evaluate how government actions affect a nation’s economy and individuals’ well-being within an economy.

Geospatial Skills and Inquiry: Apply geographic tools, including geospatial technologies, and geographic inquiry to solve spatial problems. 

Geospatial Skills and Inquiry: Apply geographic tools, including geospatial technologies, and geographic inquiry to solve spatial problems. 

Places and Regions: Describe places and regions, explaining how they are influenced by power structures.

Places and Regions: Describe places and regions, explaining how they are influenced by power structures.

Human-Environment Interaction: Evaluate the relationship between humans and the environment, including climate change.

Culture: Investigate how sense of place is impacted by different cultural perspectives.

Context, Change, and Continuity: Ask historical questions about context, change and continuity in order to identify and analyze dominant and nondominant narratives about the past.

Historical Sources and Evidence: Investigate a variety of historical sources by: a) analyzing primary and secondary sources; b) identifying perspectives and narratives that are absent from the available sources; and c) interpreting the historical context, intended audience, purpose, and author’s point of view of these sources.

Causation and Argumentation: Integrate evidence from multiple historical sources and interpretations into a reasoned argument or compelling narrative about the past.

Identity: Analyze the ways power and language construct the social identities of race, religion, geography, ethnicity, and gender. Apply these understandings to one’s own social identities and other groups living in Minnesota, centering those whose stories and histories have been marginalized, erased, or ignored.

Identity: Analyze the ways power and language construct the social identities of race, religion, geography, ethnicity, and gender. Apply these understandings to one’s own social identities and other groups living in Minnesota, centering those whose stories and histories have been marginalized, erased, or ignored.

Ways of Knowing and Methodologies: Use ethnic and Indigenous studies methods and sources in order to understand the roots of contemporary systems of oppression and apply lessons from the past that could eliminate historical and contemporary injustices.

Ways of Knowing and Methodologies: Use ethnic and Indigenous studies methods and sources in order to understand the roots of contemporary systems of oppression and apply lessons from the past that could eliminate historical and contemporary injustices.

Describe how consensus building is used to identify and respond to a community problem.

Describe how democratic values including fairness, equality, justice, rule of law, freedom and/or individual rights guide and impact the classroom.

"List personal group associations and name personal roles and responsibilities to each of those groups. "

Examine how identity shapes our perspectives about a local issue and describe ways particular community problems are addressed.

Locate areas inhabited by Indigenous people united by language and similar ways of life in North America and understand the impact of permanent tribal homelands on Indigenous people of Minnesota.

Explain how the limited supply of natural resources requires people to make decisions about resource use, and examine a specific resource use decision made in your community.

Explain how incentives can change people’s decisions about resource use.

Explain what it means for a resource to be productive and how productivity can increase.

Explain how a nation’s resources influence the goods and services it can produce and why people in different cultures, regions or countries may make different decisions about resource use.

Analyze both fixed and dynamic maps using the TODALSS criteria when investigating places from local to global scales.

Ask spatial questions and acquire geographic sources from different perspectives to answer them.

Use maps and concepts of location to identify and describe political features (states/territories, major cities, capitals) and recognize the Indigenous land these places were built on.

Describe physical and human characteristics needed for different types of agricultural and energy production regions.

Explain how changes in climate and choices humans make impact environments from local to global scales.

Analyze how different perspectives have influenced decisions about where to locate and name places.

Pose a question about an issue in the community and/or the contemporary world and investigate its history.

Compare and contrast two historical sources to investigate a contemporary issue and its historical roots.

Create a timeline demonstrating a sequence of events related to a contemporary local or global issue.

Investigate government responses to migration and immigration both locally and nationally.

Explain the role that stereotypes and images based on race, religion, geography, ethnicity and gender play in the construction of an individual’s/group’s identity. Identify the implications associated with these stereotypes and images and how and why they may have changed over time.

Identify the processes and impacts of colonization and examine how discrimination and the oppression of various racial and ethnic groups have produced resistance movements.

Identify examples of individuals or groups who have had an impact on world history. Explain how the actions of these individuals and groups have helped shape the world around them and the world today.