Big Ideas
Big Ideas
We shape the local environment, and the local environment shapes who we are and how we live.
Our rights, roles, and responsibilities are important for building strong communities.
Healthy communities recognize and respect the diversity of individuals and care for the local environment.
Content
Learning Standards
Content
characteristics of the local community that provide organization and meet the needs of the community
- Sample topics:
- local government
- public utilities
- emergency services
- policing
- transportation
- stores
diverse cultures, backgrounds, and perspectives within the local and other communities
- Sample topic:
- different languages, customs, art, music, traditions, holidays, food, clothing, and dress
relationships between a community and its environment
- Sample topics:
- natural resource industries
- parks and other natural areas
- population growth and new construction
- water and sewage treatment
- Key questions:
- How does your community depend on the local environment?
- What effects do the activities in your community have on the environment?
roles, rights, and responsibilities in the local community
- Sample topics:
- individual rights and interests versus the “public interest”
- responsibilities to other people and the environment
- Key questions:
- Who gets to make decisions and why?
- How do decisions affect different people?
key events and developments in the local community, and in local First Peoples communities
- Sample topics:
- community milestones (e.g., the founding of the community, the opening and closing of local businesses, the construction of new buildings)
- celebrations and holidays
- cultural events
- growth or decline of a community
- Key questions:
- What is the most significant event in your local community’s history?
- How is your community different now from what it was like before settlers arrived?
natural and human-made features of the local environment
- Sample topics:
- natural features: mountains, forests, waterways, local plants and animals
- human-made features: buildings, bridges, dams, dykes
- Key question:
- How does the rural environment differ from the urban environment?
Curricular Competency
Learning Standards
Curricular Competency
Use Social Studies inquiry processes and skills to ask questions; gather, interpret, and analyze ideas; and communicate findings and decisions
- Key skills:
- Recognize that maps are used to represent real places and relate pictorial representations to their physical locations.
- Follow a path to a destination using a pictorial representation (e.g., picture map).
- Access information from audio, visual, material, or print sources.
- Collect information from personal experiences, oral sources, and visual representations.
- Make comparisons to discover similarities and differences.
- With teacher prompts, make simple interpretations from information gathered (e.g., families have similar needs, families have differences).
- Use oral, written, or visual communication forms to accomplish given presentation tasks (e.g., show and tell, captioned pictures).
- Brainstorm, discuss, and compare possible solutions to a selected problem.
Explain the significance of personal or local events, objects, people, or places (significance)
- Sample activities:
- Brainstorm a list of the most significant places in your community and explain why these locations are important.
- Research the history of a significant event or person in the history of your community.
- Key question:
- How does the significance of various events, objects, people, and places change over time?
Ask questions, make inferences, and draw conclusions about the content and features of different types of sources (evidence)
- Sample activities:
- Compare old and new pictures of locations in your community and discuss how things have changed over time.
- Propose reasons for important events in your community and compare your hypotheses with the explanations of historians or other experts.
- Investigate the history of a significant person in your community using sources like news articles, photographs, and videos.
Sequence objects, images, or events, and distinguish between what has changed and what has stayed the same (continuity and change)
- Sample activities:
- Create a visual timeline for important community events using photographs or drawings.
- Compare changes in technology in your parents’ and grandparents’ time.
- Distinguish between scheduled and unscheduled events.
Recognize causes and consequences of events, decisions, or developments in their lives (cause and consequence)
Explore different perspectives on people, places, issues, or events in their lives (perspective)
Identify fair and unfair aspects of events, decisions, or actions in their lives and consider appropriate courses of action (ethical judgment)