Enduring Understandings - important ideas that students should carry with them years beyond the instruction received this year.

• Citizens have rights, roles, and responsibilities.

• Individuals and groups make, enforce and apply rules and laws (government).

• Chronology organizes people and events and helps explain historical relationships between the past and present. (historical inquiry)

• Societies are diverse and change over time.

• Historians use primary and secondary sources to ask and answer questions about the past and present (historical inquiry)

• The exchange of goods and services leads to trade and interdependence.

• Maps, globes and other geographic tools are used to locate information about places.

• Human activity changes and is changed by the physical environment.

• People migrate and settle in different places for a variety of reasons.

• Historians use primary and secondary sources to ask and answer questions about the past and present (historical inquiry).

• Individuals and groups make, enforce and apply rules and laws (government).

• Physical and human characteristics of places define regions.

• Human activity changes and is changed by the physical environment.

• We share responsibility for the use of scarce resources.

• The exchange of goods and services leads to trade and interdependence.

Essential Questions - most important “big picture” questions students should be able to answer after completing learning activities.

• Who makes the rules/laws in our classroom? How are they enforced?
• How are roles and responsibilities in schools in different places alike? Different?
• What are the roles and responsibilities of the people in your school?

• What is history?

• How are the members of your family different from others? How are they the same?      

• What types of sources can we look at to find out about a family's history?

• How are goods and services distributed?

• How can maps help us to locate information about our neighborhoods?

• How does the physical environment affect what people do in the neighborhood?

• What are some differences and similarities between your school and your parents/grand-parents' school? Where does this information come from?

• What types of sources can we look at to find out about a family's history?

• Why does your family live here, or, why did they move here?

• How are roles and responsibilities in schools in different places alike? Different?

• What roles do the Mayor, City Council, and Business leaders play in making rules and laws?

• What are the human and physical characteristics of your neighborhood?

• How does your neighborhood compare with a similar neighborhood in Japan?

• Which goods and services are found in your school? Neighborhood? Community? If none, why not?

• How are decisions made about scarce resources?

• What are some ways our lives are like those of the people of Japan? What are some ways our lives are different?

• How do places change over time?

Standards and Benchmarks

History 1: Students understand the chronological organization of history and know how to organize events and people into major eras to identify and explain historical relationships.

Benchmark 1A: Students now the general chronological order of events and people in history.

History 2: Students know how to use the processes and resources of historical inquiry.

Benchmark 2A: Students know how to formulate questions and hypotheses regarding what happened in the past and how to obtain and analyze historical data to answer questions and test hypotheses.                                                                                                       

History 3: Students understand that societies are diverse and change over time.

Benchmark  3 B:  Students understand the history of social organization in various societies.

History 4: Students understand how science, technology, and economic activity have developed, changed, and affected societies throughout history.

Benchmark H4A: Students understand the impact of scientific and technological developments on individuals and societies. 

History 5: Students understand political institutions and theories that developed and changed over time.

Benchmark H5C: Students know how political power has been acquired, maintained, used, and/or lost throughout history.

History 6: Students know that religious and philosophical ideas have been powerful forces throughout history.

Benchmark H6B: Students know how societies have been affected by religions and philosophies.

Geography 1: Students know how to use and construct maps, globes, and other geographic tools to locate and derive information about people, places, and environments.

Benchmark A: Students know how to use maps, globes, and other geographic tools to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective.      

Geography 2: Students know the physical and human characteristics of places, and use this knowledge to define and study regions and their patterns of change.

Benchmark 2A: Students know the physical and human characteristics of places

Geography 3: Physical processes shaped the earth's surfaces.

Benchmark G3A: Students know the physical processes that shaped earth's surface patterns.

Standard Geography 4: Students understand how economic, political, cultural and social processes interact to shape patterns of human populations, interdependence, cooperation and conflict.

Benchmark4 A: Students know the characteristics, location, distribution, and migration of human populations.

Geography 5: Students understand the effects of interactions between human and physical systems and changes in meaning, use, distribution, and importance of resources.

Benchmark5 B: Students know physical systems affect human systems.

Civics 2: Students know how to use structure and function of local, state, and national government and how citizen involvement shapes public policy

Benchmark C2B: Students know how power, authority, and responsibility are distributed, shared, and limited.

Civics 4: Students understand how citizens exercise the roles, rights, and responsibilities of participation in civic life at all levels.

Benchmark C4C: Students know how citizens can exercise their rights. 

Economics 1: Students understand that because of the condition of scarcity, decisions must be made about the use of scarce resources.

Benchmark E1A: Students know that economic choices are made because resources are scarce and that the act of making economic choices imposes opportunity costs (e.g., using land for farming and ranching, forests for recreation or lumber). 

Economics 2: Students understand how different economic systems impact decisions about the use of resources and the production and distribution of goods and services.

Benchmark 2A: Students understand that different economic systems employ different means to produce, distribute, and exchange goods and services.

Economics 3: Students understand the results of trade, exchange, and interdependence among individuals, house holds, businesses, governments, and societies.

Benchmark 3A: Students understand that the exchange of goods and services creates economic interdependence and change.

Grade 1 Conceptual Vocabulary
 

Parents

First graders are ready to move outward from themselves to the community and family that surround them. Social Studies lessons will focus on simple civics concepts within the family, neighborhood, and school environments. The country of comparison is Japan, and families can support first grade learning by finding the United States and Japan on a globe or map of the world. Help your child find Colorado and Colorado Springs on a map of the states, and your neighborhood on a map of Colorado Springs. Explain your family rules and rituals as similar to the cultural practices of the United States and Japan. Just being aware of the course of study will encourage you to point out daily references to the ways countries and communities work to your child.

ABCs of Elementary Years: These ABC Tips are designed to help you support your child’s learning in social studies during their years in elementary school.