Grades K, 1, 2

Developing Questions & Planning Inquiries

Applying Disciplinary Concepts & Tools

Evaluating Sources & Using Evidence

Communicating Conclusions & Taking Informed Action

Constructing Compelling Questions

Constructing Supporting Questions

Determining Helpful Sources

Civics

Economics

Geography

History

Gathering and Evaluating Sources

Developing Claims and Using Evidence

Communicating and Critiquing Conclusions

Taking Informed Action

Explain why the compelling question is important to the student.

Identify disciplinary ideas associated with a compelling question.

Identify facts and concepts associated with a supporting question.

Make connections between supporting questions and compelling questions.

Determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions.

Civic and Political Institutions

Participation and Deliberation: Applying Civic Virtues and Democratic Principles

Processes, Rules, and Laws

Economic Decision Making

Exchange and Markets

The National Economy

The Global Economy

Geographic Representations: Spatial Views of the World

Human-Environment Interaction: Place, Regions, and Culture

Human Population: Spatial Patterns and Movements

Global Interconnections: Changing Spatial Patterns

Change, Continuity, and Context

Perspectives

Historical Sources and Evidence

Causation and Argumentation

Gather relevant information from one or two sources while using the origin and structure to guide the selection.

Evaluate a source by distinguishing between fact and opinion.

Begins in grades 3–5

Begins in grades 3–5

Construct an argument with reasons.

Construct explanations using correct sequence and relevant information.

Present a summary of an argument using print, oral, and digital technologies.

Ask and answer questions about arguments.

Ask and answer questions about explanations

Identify and explain a range of local, regional, and global problems, and some ways in which people are trying to address these problems.

Identify ways to take action to help address local, regional, and global problems.

Use listening, consensus-building, and voting procedures to decide on and take action in their classrooms.

Describe roles and responsibilities of people in authority.

Explain how all people, not just official leaders, play important roles in a community.

Explain the need for and purposes of rules in various settings inside and outside of school.

Begins in grades 3–5

Explain what governments are and some of their functions.

Describe how communities work to accomplish common tasks, establish responsibilities, and fulfill roles of authority.

Apply civic virtues when participating in school settings.

Describe democratic principles such as equality, fairness, and respect for legitimate authority and rules.

Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions while responding attentively to others when addressing ideas and making decisions as a group.

Compare their own point of view with others' perspectives.

Explain how people can work together to make decisions in the classroom.

Identify and explain how rules function in public (classroom and school) settings.

Begins in grades 3–5

Describe how people have tried to improve their communities over time.

Explain how scarcity necessitates decision making.

Identify the benefits and costs of making various personal decisions.

Describe the skills and knowledge required to produce certain goods and services.

Describe the goods and services that people in the local community produce and those that are produced in other communities.

Identify prices of products in a local market.

Explain how people earn income.

Describe examples of costs of production.

Begins in grades 3-5

Describe the role of banks in an economy.

Explain why people save.

Begins in grades 3–5

Describe examples of the goods and services that governments provide.

Describe examples of capital goods and human capital.

Describe why people in one country trade goods and services with people in other countries.

Describe products that are produced abroad and sold domestically and products that are produced domestically and sold abroad.

Construct maps, graphs, and other representations of familiar places.

Use maps, graphs, photographs, and other representations to describe places and the relationships and interactions that shape them.

Use maps, globes, and other simple geographic models to identify cultural and environmental characteristics of places.

Explain how weather, climate, and other environmental characteristics affect people's lives in a place or region.

Describe how human activities affect the cultural and environmental characteristics of places or regions.

Identify some cultural and environmental characteristics of specific places.

Explain why and how people, goods, and ideas move from place to place.

Compare how people in different types of communities use local and distant environments to meet their daily needs.

Describe the connections between the physical environment of a place and the economic activities found there.

Describe changes in the physical and cultural characteristics of various world regions.

Explain how the consumption of products connects people to distant places.

Identify ways that a catastrophic disaster may affect people living in a place.

Create a chronological sequence of multiple events.

Compare life in the past to life today.

Generate questions about individuals and groups who have shaped a significant historical change.

Compare perspectives of people in the past to those of people in the present.

Begins in grades 3–5

Compare different accounts of the same historical event.

Begins in grades 9–12

Begins in grades 9–12

Identify different kinds of historical sources.

Explain how historical sources can be used to study the past.

Identify the maker, date, and place of origin for a historical source from information within the source itself.

Generate questions about a particular historical source as it relates to a particular historical event or development.

Begins in grade 3–5

Generate possible reasons for an event or development in the past.

Begins in grades 6–8

Select which reasons might be more likely than others to explain a historical event or development.

Begins in grades 3–5