Contemporary Issues

Social Studies Practices

Source Analysis Skills: Students will analyze a variety of news sources to demonstrate an understanding of the responsibility of informed citizenship in the age of digital media.

Geography and Environment: Students will see, understand, and appreciate the web of relationships between people, places, and environments using the knowledge, skills, and concepts within the five themes of geography.

Historical Impacts: Students will explore how historical events continue to have an impact on the contemporary world.

Politics: Students will analyze and explain how the U.S. government interacts with its citizens and the global community.

Culture and Innovation: Students will explore the similarities and differences among people, including their beliefs, values, and traditions.

Collect data and information from a variety of primary and secondary sources, including:

Critically examine a primary or secondary source in order to:

Synthesize data from a variety of sources in order to:

Construct and communicate arguments by citing supporting evidence to:

Develop historical awareness by:

Develop geographic awareness by:

Understand the importance of being well-informed and engaged, including identifying problems or dilemmas, proposing appropriate solutions, formulating action plans, and assessing the positive and negative results of actions taken.

Identify markers of verification, transparency, accountability, and independence in a news story.

Use a variety of methods to verify both written and visual information.

Distinguish between opinion and news, and examine for effective arguments and logical and/or illogical reasoning.

Evaluate the reliability of an anonymous source.

Compare and contrast varying viewpoints, perspectives, and sources on contemporary issues.

Describe key geographic concepts, such as scale, pattern, sustainability, diffusion, and connectivity.

Describe how changing physical and human characteristics of a place can influence culture, economics, and politics at the local, national, and global level.

Examine key features of major world regions, and explain how current issues link or divide those regions.

Analyze how countries are interconnected in the modern world (e.g., improved transportation, communication technology, migration, trade, commodity chains, and multinational organizations).

Discuss the immediate and lasting impact of human-environment interactions on places and peoples

Distinguish between historical facts and historical interpretation.

Describe the relationships between past and current conflicts, including wars, domestic and global acts of terrorism, and other acts of violence.

Describe the relationship between historical events and the contemporary world, and analyze the lasting impacts of these events.

Examine the events that unify or challenge state sovereignty and stability (e.g., terrorism, independence movements, internal political/cultural conflict).

Describe the patterns of stability and change within political governance (e.g., elections, nullification, political representation, societal movements).

Discuss the evolving role of the United States in international affairs and the impact of current events on American policy.

Define culture and compare the concepts of popular culture and local culture.

Examine the diffusion and impact of popular culture on local culture, as well as efforts to preserve local culture.

Analyze how the diffusion of culture, language, and religion play a role in contemporary issues.

Describe the effects of scientific, technological, and medical innovations in society.

Analyze the changing role of media and technology on the spread of information and the effects of global culture.

Printed materials

Graphic representations

Field observations/Landscape analysis

Artifacts

Media and technology sources

Oral History

Extract, summarize, and paraphrase significant ideas and relevant information

Discern differences between evidence and assertion

Recognize the significance of author’s purpose, point of view, and bias

Draw logical inferences and conclusions

Assess the strengths and limitations of arguments

Establish accuracy and validity by comparing sources to each other

Recognize disparities among multiple accounts

Frame appropriate questions for further investigation

Demonstrate and defend an understanding of ideas

Compare and contrast viewpoints

Illustrate cause and effect

Predict likely outcomes

Devise new outcomes or solutions

Engage in appropriate civic discourse

Recognizing how and why historical accounts change over time

Perceiving and presenting past events and issues as they might have been experienced by the people of the time, with historical empathy vs. present- mindedness

Evaluating how unique circumstances of time and place create context and contribute to action and reaction

Identifying patterns of continuity and change over time, making connections to the present

Analyzing and determining the use of diverse types of maps based on the origin, authority, structure, context, and validity

Using the geographic perspective to analyze relationships, patterns, and diffusion across space at multiple scales

Analyzing locations, conditions, and connections of places and using maps to investigate spatial associations among phenomena

Examining how geographers use regions and how perceptions of regions are fluid across time and space

Analyzing interaction between humans and the physical environment