Sixth Grade: Minnesota Studies

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.

Rights and Responsibilities: Explain and evaluate rights, duties and responsibilities in democratic society.

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.

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.

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

Personal Finance: Apply economic concepts and models to develop individual and collective financial goals and strategies for achieving these goals, taking into consideration historical and contemporary conditions that either inhibit or advance the creation of individual and generational wealth.

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.

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.

Global and International: Explain why people trade and why nations encourage or limit trade. Analyze the costs and benefits of international trade and globalization on communities and the environment.

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.

Human Systems: Analyze patterns of movement and interconnectedness within and between cultural, economic and political systems from a local to global scale.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Perspectives: Identify diverse points of view, and describe how one’s frame of reference influences historical perspective. 

Historical Perspectives: Identify diverse points of view, and describe how one’s frame of reference influences historical perspective. 

Historical Perspectives: Identify diverse points of view, and describe how one’s frame of reference influences historical perspective. 

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.

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

Connecting Past and Present: Use historical methods and sources to identify and analyze the roots of a contemporary issue. Design a plan to address it.

Connecting Past and Present: Use historical methods and sources to identify and analyze the roots of a contemporary issue. Design a plan to address it.

Connecting Past and Present: Use historical methods and sources to identify and analyze the roots of a contemporary issue. Design a plan to address it.

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.

Resistance: Describe how individuals and communities have fought for freedom and liberation against systemic and coordinated exercises of power locally and globally. Identify strategies or times that have resulted in lasting change. Organize with others to engage in activities that could further the rights and dignity of all.

Resistance: Describe how individuals and communities have fought for freedom and liberation against systemic and coordinated exercises of power locally and globally. Identify strategies or times that have resulted in lasting change. Organize with others to engage in activities that could further the rights and dignity of all.

Resistance: Describe how individuals and communities have fought for freedom and liberation against systemic and coordinated exercises of power locally and globally. Identify strategies or times that have resulted in lasting change. Organize with others to engage in activities that could further the rights and dignity of all.

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.

Analyze a state or local policy issue by identifying and examining opposing positions from diverse perspectives and frames of reference, interpreting and applying graphic data, determining conflicting values and beliefs, defending and justifying a position with evidence, and developing strategies to persuade others to adopt this position.

Locate a democratic principle embodied in the Constitution of the State of Minnesota or in one of Minnesota’s Tribal Nations’ constitutions. Summarize the concept of federalism and describe the relationship between the powers of the federal and state governments.

Summarize the concept of citizenship in the United States, explain how individuals become citizens by birth or naturalization, and compare and contrast the rights and responsibilities of citizens, noncitizens and dual citizens.

Identify the purpose of the Constitution of the State of Minnesota and explain how the Constitution of the State of Minnesota organizes state government and authorizes local government (county, city, school board and township). Compare and contrast the ways state and local government are funded.

Describe the goals, offenses, penalties, long-term consequences and privacy concerns of Minnesota’s juvenile justice system and evaluate the impact on youth, including those from historically disenfranchised groups.

Explain the concept of sovereignty and how treaty rights are exercised by the Anishinaabe and Dakota today.

Describe various types of income. Explain the role that the development of human capital plays in determining one’s income. Create a budget based on a given monthly income.

Describe the movement of goods and services, resources and money through markets at the community, national and global level.

Explain how people living in a community are impacted by government policies regarding land use. Investigate how communities are impacted when consumers have or do not have opportunities to work, shop, eat and connect with one another locally, helping the community build assets.

Explain why companies might move production to other states or countries.

Use geospatial technologies to create and interpret fixed and dynamic maps that represent Mni Sóta Maḳoce and Minnesota.

Use geographic tools to support a claim with evidence and explain reasoning to address a spatial problem within Minnesota.

Compare and contrast different places and regions on the land that is Minnesota today, including how power structures have impacted each one over time.

Explain how physical features and the location of resources affect settlement patterns, including those of Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples, and the growth of cities.

Evaluate how two (or more) different communities address the issues related to climate change in Minnesota.

Describe how Dakota and Anishinaabe people today narrate their own history, including seasonal lifeways in the pre-contact period.

Describe the varied and diverse interactions of Indigenous people, European/American traders and settler-colonists in the upper Mississippi River region, and examine how settler colonialism conflicted with Dakota and Anishinaabe ways of life.

Describe how people in Minnesota participated in the institution of slavery, abolition and the U.S. Civil War, identifying examples of change and continuity.

Analyze connections between major reform and political movements in Minnesota during the Progressive era and World War I, including the role of women.

Identify multiple narratives about how World War II and the Cold War impacted Minnesotans.

Understand the diverse and conflicting ways that Dakota, Anishinaabe, European and American peoples understood their relationship to the land, particularly regarding property and ownership, and examine the consequences of these conflicting views on the environment over time.

Identify and describe diverse and conflicting points of view about treaty-making, including the unequal power dynamics that shaped the treaty-making process.

Examine conflicting narratives about the United States-Dakota War of 1862. Analyze the perspectives of settlers and Dakota people before, during and after the war. Identify the narratives that are absent.

Evaluate primary and secondary sources about the process by which Minnesota became a territory and state; consider what perspectives and narratives are absent from the available sources.

Evaluate the impact of big business, industrialization, farming and/or technology on the use of natural resources within different communities in Minnesota. Organize applicable evidence into a coherent argument about the past.

Construct a narrative about why and how people have migrated to Minnesota as a result of warfare and/or genocide since 1960, using primary sources about immigrant experiences.

Examine the historical relationship and memorialization of the U.S. Civil War and the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 in Minnesota.

Examine the history and memory of migration and immigration in Minnesota during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the impact of immigration on Indigenous people.

Identify and describe how Minnesotans have fought for freedom and equality from the Civil Rights era until today.

Identify and explain how discrimination based on race, gender, economic, ableism, and social group identity affects the history, health, growth, and/or current experiences of residents of Minnesota.

Examine how and why the Minnesota landscape has been shaped by people.

Identify individuals, community organizations, businesses and corporations that make the student’s community in Minnesota unique. Analyze how these groups do community building efforts, specifically by racialized and marginalized groups/individuals in Minnesota.

Identify how the arts have been a part of strategies, activities and/or engagement for social and political change.

Examine the impact of slavery and race in Minnesota today.