Social Science / History Content Standards Introduction

Historical and Social Sciences Analysis Skills

The intellectual skills noted below are to be learned through, and applied to, the content standards for kindergarten through grade five. They are to be assessed only in conjunction with the content standards in kindergarten through grade five.
In addition to the standards for kindergarten through grade five, students demonstrate the following intellectual, reasoning, reflection, and research skills:

Chronological and Spatial Thinking

• Students place key events and people of the historical era they are studying in a chronological sequence and within a spatial context; they interpret time lines.
  
  
• Students correctly apply terms related to time, including past, present, future, decade, century, and generation.
  
  
• Students explain how the present is connected to the past, identifying both similarities and differences between the two, and how some things change over time and some things stay the same.
  
  
• Students use map and globe skills to determine the absolute locations of places and interpret information available through a map's or globe's legend, scale, and symbolic representations.
  
  
• Students judge the significance of the relative location of a place (e.g., proximity to a harbor, on trade routes) and analyze how relative advantages or disadvantages can change over time.

Research, Evidence, and Point of View

• Students differentiate between primary and secondary sources.
  
  
• Students pose relevant questions about events they encounter in historical documents, eyewitness accounts, oral histories, letters, diaries, artifacts, photographs, maps, artworks, and architecture.
  
  
• Students distinguish fact from fiction by comparing documentary sources on historical figures and events with fictionalized characters and events.

Historical Interpretation

• Students summarize the key events of the era they are studying and explain the historical contexts of those events.
  
  
• Students identify the human and physical characteristics of the places they are studying and explain how those features form the unique character of those places.
  
  
• Students identify and interpret the multiple causes and effects of historical events.
  
  
• Students conduct cost-benefit analyses of historical and current events.

Sixth Through Eighth Grades

Historical and Social Sciences Analysis Skills

The intellectual skills noted below are to be learned through, and applied to, the content standards for grades six through eight. They are to be assessed only in conjunction with the content standards in grades six through eight.
In addition to the standards for grades six through eight, students demonstrate the following intellectual reasoning, reflection, and research skills:

Chronological and Spatial Thinking

• Students explain how major events are related to one another in time.
  
  
• Students construct various time lines of key events, people, and periods of the historical era they are studying.
  
  
• Students use a variety of maps and documents to identify physical and cultural features of neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries and to explain the historical migration of people, expansion and disintegration of empires, and the growth of economic systems.

Research, Evidence, and Point of View

• Students frame questions that can be answered by historical study and research.
  
  
• Students distinguish fact from opinion in historical narratives and stories.
  
  
• Students distinguish relevant from irrelevant information, essential from incidental information, and verifiable from unverifiable information in historical narratives and stories.
  
  
• Students assess the credibility of primary and secondary sources and draw sound conclusions from them.
  
  
• Students detect the different historical points of view on historical events and determine the context in which the historical statements were made (the questions asked, sources used, author's perspectives).

Historical Interpretation

• Students explain the central issues and problems from the past, placing people and events in a matrix of time and place.
  
  
• Students understand and distinguish cause, effect, sequence, and correlation in historical events, including the long-and short-term causal relations.