Social Sciences Analysis Skills (9-12TH)
Chronological and Spatial Thinking
1. Students compare the present with the past, evaluating the consequences of past events and decisions and determining the lessons that were learned.
2. Students analyze how change happens at different rates at different times; understand that some aspects can change while others remain the same.
3. Students use a variety of maps and documents to interpret human movement, including major patterns of domestic and international migration.
Historical Research, Evidence, and Point of View
1. Students distinguish valid arguments from fallacious arguments in historical interpretations.
2. Students identify bias and prejudice in historical interpretations.
3. Students evaluate major debates among historians concerning alternative interpretations of the past, including an analysis of authors' use of evidence and the distinctions between sound generalizations and misleading oversimplifications.
Historical Interpretation
1. Students show the connections, causal and otherwise, between particular historical events and larger social, economic, and political trends and developments.
2. Students recognize the complexity of historical causes and effects, including the limitations on determining cause and effect.
3. Students interpret past events and issues within the context in which an event unfolded rather than solely in terms of present-day norms and values.
Grade Twelve
Principles of American Democracy
12.1 Students explain the fundamental principles and moral values of American democracy as expressed in the U.S. Constitution and other essential documents of American democracy.
12.2 Students evaluate and take and defend positions on the scope and limits of rights and obligations as democratic citizens, the relationships among them, and how they are secured.
12.3 Students evaluate and take and defend positions on what the fundamental values and principles of civil society are (i.e., the autonomous sphere of voluntary personal, social, and economic relations that are not part of government), their interdependence, and the meaning and importance of those values and principles for a free society.
12.4 Students analyze the unique roles and responsibilities of the three branches of government as established by the U.S. Constitution.
12.5 Students summarize landmark U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution and its amendments.
12.6 Students evaluate issues regarding campaigns for national, state, and local elective offices.
12.7 Students analyze and compare the powers and procedures of the national, state, tribal, and local governments.
12.8 Students evaluate and take and defend positions on the influence of the media on American political life.
12.9 Students analyze the origins, characteristics, and development of different political systems across time, with emphasis on the quest for political democracy, its advances, and its obstacles.
12.10 Students formulate questions about and defend their analyses of tensions within our constitutional democracy and the importance of maintaining a balance between the following concepts: majority rule and individual rights; liberty and equality; state and national authority in a federal system; civil disobedience and the rule of law; freedom of the press and the right to a fair trial; the relationship of religion and government.
Grade Eleven
United States History and Geography:
Continuity and Change in the Twentieth Century
11.1 Students analyze the significant events in the founding of the nation and its attempts to realize the philosophy of government described in the Declaration of Independence.
11.2 Students analyze the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.
11.3 Students analyze the role religion played in the founding of America, its lasting moral, social, and political impacts, and issues regarding religious liberty.
11.4 Students trace the rise of the United States to its role as a world power in the twentieth century.
11.5 Students analyze the major political, social, economic, technological, and cultural developments of the 1920s.
11.6 Students analyze the different explanations for the Great Depression and how the New Deal fundamentally changed the role of the federal government.
11.7 Students analyze America's participation in World War II.
11.8 Students analyze the economic boom and social transformation of post-World War II America.
11.9 Students analyze U.S. foreign policy since World War II.
11.10 Students analyze the development of federal civil rights and voting rights.
Grade Ten
World History, Culture, and Geography: The Modern World
10.1 Students relate the moral and ethical principles in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, in Judaism, and in Christianity to the development of Western political thought.
10.2 Students compare and contrast the Glorious Revolution of England, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution and their enduring effects worldwide on the political expectations for self-government and individual liberty.
10.3 Students analyze the effects of the Industrial Revolution in England, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States.
10.4 Students analyze patterns of global change in the era of New Imperialism.
10.5 Students analyze the causes and course of the First World War.
10.6 Students analyze the effects of the First World War.
10.7 Students analyze the rise of totalitarian governments after World War I.
10.8 Students analyze the causes and consequences of World War II.
10.9 Students analyze the international developments in the post-World World War II world.
10.10 Students analyze instances of the Middle East, Africa, Mexico and other parts of Latin America, and China.
Grade Nine
The California State Board of Education has established grade nine history-social sciences as an elective year. There are no standards for grade nine.
Social Sciences Analysis Skills (6-8TH)
Chronological and Spatial Thinking
1. Students explain how major events are related to one another in time.
2. Students construct various time lines of key events, people, and periods of the historical era they are studying.
3. 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
1. Students frame questions that can be answered by historical study and research.
2. Students distinguish fact from opinion in historical narratives and stories.
3. Students distinguish relevant from irrelevant information, essential from incidental information, and verifiable from unverifiable information in historical narratives and stories.
Historical Interpretation
1. Students explain the central issues and problems from the past, placing people and events in a matrix of time and place.
2. Students understand and distinguish cause, effect, sequence, and correlation in historical events, including the long-and short-term causal relations.
3. Students explain the sources of historical continuity and how the combination of ideas and events explains the emergence of new patterns.
Grade Eight
United States History and Geography: Growth and Conflict
8.1 Students understand the major events preceding the founding of the nation and relate their significance to the development of American constitutional democracy.
8.2 Students analyze the political principles underlying the U.S. Constitution and compare the enumerated and implied powers of the federal government.
8.3 Students understand the foundation of the American political system and the ways in which citizens participate in it.
8.4 Students analyze the aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation.
8.5 Students analyze U.S. foreign policy in the early Republic.
8.6 Students analyze the divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s and the challenges they faced, with emphasis on the Northeast.
8.7 Students analyze the divergent paths of the American people in the South from 1800 to the mid-1800s and the challenges they faced.
8.8 Students analyze the divergent paths of the American people in the West from 1800 to the mid-1800s and the challenges they faced.
8.9 Students analyze the early and steady attempts to abolish slavery and to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.
8.10 Students analyze the multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War.
8.11 Students analyze the character and lasting consequences of Reconstruction.
Grade Seven
World History and Geography: Medieval and Early Modern Times
7.1 Students analyze the causes and effects of the vast expansion and ultimate disintegration of the Roman Empire.
7.2 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Islam in the Middle Ages.
7.3 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of China in the Middle Ages.
7.4 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the sub-Saharan civilizations of Ghana and Mali in Medieval Africa.
7.5 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Medieval Japan.
7.6 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Medieval Europe.
7.7 Students compare and contrast the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the Meso-American and Andean civilizations.
7.8 Students analyze the origins, accomplishments, and geographic diffusion of the Renaissance.
7.9 Students analyze the historical developments of the Reformation.
7.10 Students analyze the historical developments of the Scientific Revolution and its lasting effect on religious, political, and cultural institutions.
7.11 Students analyze political and economic change in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries (the Age of Exploration, the Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason).
Grade Six
World History and Geography: Ancient Civilizations
6.1 Students describe what is known through archaeological studies of the early physical and cultural development of humankind from the Paleolithic era to the agricultural revolution.
6.2 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Kush.
6.3 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the Ancient Hebrews.
6.4 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of Ancient Greece.
6.5 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of India.
6.6 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of China.
6.7 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures during the development of Rome.
Social Sciences Analysis Skills (K-5TH)
Chronological and Spatial Thinking
1. 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.
2. Students correctly apply terms related to time, including past, present, future, decade, century.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Students judge the significance of the relative location of a place and analyze how relative advantages or disadvantages can change over time.
Research, Evidence, and Point of View
1. Students differentiate between primary and secondary sources.
2. Students pose relevant questions about events they encounter in historical documents, eyewitness accounts, oral histories, letters, diaries, artifacts, photographs, maps, artworks, and architecture.
3. Students distinguish fact from fiction by comparing documentary sources on historical figures and events with fictionalized characters and events.
Historical Interpretation
1. Students summarize the key events of the era they are studying and explain the historical contexts of those events.
2. Students identify the human and physical characteristics of the places they are studying.
3. Students identify and interpret the multiple causes and effects of historical events.
4. Students conduct cost-benefit analyses of historical and current events.
Grade Five
United States History and Geography: Making a New Nation
5.1 Students describe the major pre-Columbian settlements, including the cliff dwellers and pueblo people of the desert Southwest, the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the nomadic nations of the Great Plains, and the woodland peoples east of the Mississippi River.
5.2 Students trace the routes of early explorers and describe the early explorations of the Americas.
5.3 Students describe the cooperation and conflict that existed among the American Indians and between the Indian nations and the new settlers.
5.4 Students understand the political, religious, social, and economic institutions that evolved in the colonial era.
5.5 Students explain the causes of the American Revolution.
5.6 Students understand the course and consequences of the American Revolution.
5.7 Students describe the people and events associated with the development of the U.S. Constitution and analyze the Constitution's significance as the foundation of the American republic.
5.8 Students trace the colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s, with emphasis on the role of economic incentives, effects of the physical and political geography, and transportation systems.
5.9 Students know the location of the current 50 states and the names of their capitals.
Grade Four
California: A Changing State
4.1 Students demonstrate an understanding of the physical and human geographic features that define places and regions in California.
4.2 Students describe the social, political, cultural, and economic life and interactions among people of California from the pre-Columbian societies to the Spanish mission and Mexican rancho periods.
4.3 Students explain the economic, social, and political life in California from the establishment of the Bear Flag Republic through the Mexican-American War, the Gold Rush, and the granting of statehood.
4.4 Students explain how California became an agricultural and industrial power, tracing the transformation of the California economy and its political and cultural development since the 1850s.
4.5 Students understand the structures, functions, and powers of the local, state, and federal governments as described in the U.S. Constitution.
Grade Three
Continuity and Change
3.1 Students describe the physical and human geography and use maps, tables, graphs, photographs, and charts to organize information about people, places, and environments in a spatial context.
3.2 Students describe the American Indian nations in their local region long ago and in the recent past.
3.3 Students draw from historical and community resources to organize the sequence of local historical events and describe how each period of settlement left its mark on the land.
3.4 Students understand the role of rules and laws in our daily lives and the basic structure of the U.S. government.
3.5 Students demonstrate basic economic reasoning skills and an understanding of the economy of the local region.