Social Studies Curriculum

Elementary (K-6) Frameworks

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Social Studies Core Themes K-6

The following themes link the entire K-6 social studies program of the Anchorage School District. These Core Themes constitute essential understandings in geography, history, and civics/government through which students can examine their life and the world. They are the core perspectives of the social studies program. These themes also provide priority areas for connecting social studies to other curriculum areas. The themes are drawn from a number of national sources and have been adopted by the Anchorage School District.

The ASD Social Studies Core Themes (K-6) are:

Geographic Themes

Location
Place
Human/Environment Relationships
Movement
Regions

Historical Themes

Civilization, Cultural Diffusion, and Innovation
Values, Beliefs, Political Ideas, and Institutions
Conflict and Cooperation
Comparative History of Major Developments
Social, Political, and Economic Trends and Patterns

Civics Themes

Authority
Diversity
Freedom
Justice/Fairness
Participation
Privacy
Property
Responsibility
Economics

Geographic Themes

Location. Position on the earth's surface. Absolute and relative location are two ways of describing the positions of people and places on the earth's surface.

Place. Physical and human characteristics. All places on the earth have distinctive tangible and intangible characteristics that give them meaning and character and distinguish them from other places. Geographers generally describe places by their physical or human characteristics.

Human/Environment Relationships. Relationships within places. All places on the earth have advantages and disadvantages for human settlement. High population densities have developed on flood plains, for example, where people could take advantage of fertile soils, water resources, and opportunities for river transportation. By comparison, population densities are usually low in deserts; yet flood plains are periodically subjected to severe damage, and some desert areas, such as Israel, have been modified to support large population concentrations. (Special note-this theme is also a historical theme)

Movement. Humans interacting on the earth. Human beings occupy places unevenly across the face of the earth. Some live on farms or in the country; others live in towns, villages or cities. Yet these people interact with each other: that is, they travel from one place to another, they communicate with each other or they rely upon products, information, resources, and ideas that come from beyond their immediate environment.

The most visible evidence of global "intra"dependence and the interaction of places are the transportation and communication lines that link every part of the world. These demonstrate that most people interact with other places almost every day of their lives and on a larger scale, international trade demonstrates that no country is self-sufficient. Physical movement is also present in our daily lives with the wind and sea currents, weather systems, volcanic activity and earthquakes.

Regions. How they form and change. The basic unit of geographic study is the region, an area that displays unity in terms of selected criteria. Regions can show the extent of political power such as nations, states, countries, or cities, yet there are almost countless other ways to define meaningful regions depending on the problems or criteria being considered. Some regions are defined by one characteristic such as a governmental unit, a language group, economic activity, religion, or a land form type, and others by the interplay of many complex features. Regions provide a way to organize information by common characteristics.

Sources
Guidelines for Geographic Education:: Elementary and Secondary Schools The National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) and the American Association of Geographers (AAG), 1984.

Historical Themes

Civilization, Cultural Diffusion, and Innovation. The evolution of human skills and the means of exerting power over nature and people. The rise, interaction, and decline of successive centers of such skills and power. The cultural flowering of major civilizations in the arts, literature, and thought. The role of social, religious, and political patronage of the arts and learning. The importance of the city in different eras and places.

Values, Beliefs, Political Ideas, and Institutions. The origins and spread of influential religions and ideologies. The evolution of political and social institutions, at various stages of industrial and commercial development. The interplay among ideas, material conditions, moral values, and leadership, especially in the evolution of democratic societies. The tensions between the aspirations for freedom and security, for liberty and equality, for distinction and commonalty, in human affairs.

Conflict and Cooperation. The many and various causes of war and conflict, and of approaches to peace-making, conflict resolution, mediation, and war prevention within and between societies. Relations between domestic affairs and ways of dealing wit the outside world. contrasts between international conflict and cooperation, between isolation and interdependence. The consequences of war and peace for societies and their cultures.

Comparative History of Major Developments. the characteristics of revolutionary, reactionary, and reform periods across time and place. Imperialism, ancient and modern. comparative instances of slavery and emancipation, feudalism and centralization, human successes and failures, of wisdom and folly. Comparative elites and aristocracies; the role of family, wealth, and merit.

Social, Political, and Economic Trends and Patterns. The changing patterns of class, ethnic, racial, and gender structures and relations. Immigration, industrialization, migration, social and economic mobility. The effects of schooling. the new prominence of women, minorities, and the common people the study of history, and their relation to political power and influential elites. The characteristics of multicultural societies; forces for unity and disunity.

Sources
Building a History Curriculum: Guidelines for Teaching History in Schools
The Bradley Commission on History in Schools, 1988.

Civics/Government Themes

Authority. Authority is power that is legitimized in society, usually by custom, law or prevailing principles of morality. Questions to explore are: How do we establish criteria for selecting people for positions of authority and for evaluating rules and laws? What are the benefits and costs of authority? What are the scope and limits of authority? Regulating social behavior, allocating resources and distributing responsibilities and privileges are among the primary functions of authority.

Diversity. Anchorage, Alaska, the United States and the world are places consisting of diverse individuals and groups. There are many factors which have contributed to this diversity. A belief in the value of individualism finds its political expression in the U.S. constitutional protection of freedom of speech and association. Americans are advocates of individualism but at the same time many Americans are made uneasy by the existence of this individualism. Hence, there is praise for the variety one finds among Americans at the same time as there are pressures for individuals to conform to certain norms. This is true whether we are talking about modes of dress, manners of speech, or the advocacy of political opinions. Most would agree that diversity is desirable, but not all think it desirable for the same reasons, and others argue that it does have certain costs.

Freedom. According to Lincoln, freedom for one person is tyranny for another. For many it means liberty or independence, exemption from the control of some other person or arbitrary power. The task of trying to clarify the meaning of freedom is essential if we are to understand and preserve it. Tyrants seldom tell people that they intend to deprive them of their freedom. Usually they proclaim themselves the true defenders of freedom. In the classroom we must try to identify the conditions which make the practice of freedom possible and discuss its costs as well as its benefits.

Justice (fairness). Issues of justice can be divided into three categories: distributive, procedural and corrective justice. Distributive justice discusses fair ways to distribute the benefits and burdens of society. Benefits are such things as being paid for work, the right to speak, or vote. Burdens are such things as taxes or household chores. Procedural justice discusses fair responses to correct wrongs and injuries. This deals with the fairness of the way information is gathered, not with what information is gathered, and the fairness of the way a decision is made, not the decision itself. Corrective justice discusses fair procedures for gathering information and making decisions. A correction may involve many different kinds of responses. Some of the most common responses involve making a person who has wronged or injured another give back something that was stolen, pay for damages, or suffer one form of punishment or another.

Participation. Democracy is government by the people: self-governance by citizens who participate in decision-making by various modes of direct influence or by choosing those who will make decisions in their name and with their consent. Citizen participation takes many forms, depending on one's inclination, power, and role. Interest group activity, the use of the petition and other techniques of persuasion in their many forms, efforts to attain positions of leadership, and the right to abstain from political involvement are all to be considered when evaluating the full range of options open to the democratic citizen when s/he decides how to "participate. Questions to explore are: Who does participate? What are some ways of participating? What are the conditions and attitudes that foster or hinder the citizen's desire to participate?

Privacy. Privacy exists when one or more persons restrict the access of one or more other persons to a certain thing or things. These objects of privacy could include communications, private facts about oneself, one's actions, one's thoughts and feelings and space or territory. What are some common ways people behave to establish or maintain privacy?

Property. An individual's relationship to their possessions has been important throughout history. From the parables to the most recent laws, society has tried to define and control the conditions of ownership. We should explore the scope and limits of various forms of ownership including cultural views of property ownership, most notably that of Native Americans.

Responsibility. The core of the theme of responsibility is the idea of accountability. This refers to the individuals' duty to do something or not to do something. Society seeks to achieve social order through the use of rules. The community relies on the individual's responsibility and capability for understanding the meaning of rules and for making choices guided by this understanding. The community also requires its members to exercise self-restraint in the pursuit of their personal goals.

Economics is the study of how societies use scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants. Three basic concepts in economics include: scarity, choices, and supply and demand.

Scarcity. We do not have enough resources to produce everything that we may need or want. Our wants are unlimited, thus scarity exists. Types of resources are:

Productive Resources. Land - natural resources found in nature such as minerals, fish, forests, water, and land itself.

Labor. The skills that human beings possess. Workers are part of the labor resource.

Capital. All of the property which people use to make the goods and services in our economy. This would include the machinery, buildings, and tools that are used to make products.

Entrepreneurs. The people who combine the land, labor and capital to make the product or service. They start new businesses in our community, invent new products, or design new ways of producing products or services.

Technology. Describes the use of science to develop new products and new methods for producing and distributing goods and services.

Choices. Resources are scarce and we can not have everything that we want so we must make choices When we make choices, the cost of our next best alternative we give up is known as our opportunity cost. For example, if a student chooses to use their time to watch television, the opportunity cost may be the higher grade they could have received on a test if they had studied.

Supply and Demand. Supply shows the relationship between the quantity of a productive resource supplied and price. At higher prices, more will be supplied. At lower prices, less will be supplied. Demand shows the relationship between the quantity of a productive resource bought and price. At higher prices, less will be purchased. At lower prices, more will be purchased. The interaction of supply and demand determines the prices and the quantities of goods which will be in the market.

Sources
Center for Civic Education & Council on Economic Education

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