Social Studies

Building Our Classroom Community By Learning from Model Citizens

Key Concepts:

• learn to understand characteristics of good citizenship as exemplified by historical figures and other individuals. 

  • Amelia Earhart

  • Paul Revere

  • Sojourner Truth

  • Abigail Adams

  • World War II Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP)

  • Navajo Code Talkers

• identify characteristics of good citizenship, including truthfulness, justice, equality, respect for oneself and others, responsibility in daily life, and participation in government by educating oneself about the issues, respectfully holding public officials to their word, and voting.

Symbols, Customs and Celebrations in Our Nation

Key Concepts:

• explain the significance of various community, state, and national celebrations such as Veterans Day and Thanksgiving.

• identify how selected customs, symbols, and celebrations reflect an American love of individualism, inventiveness, and freedom.

• describe the order of events by using designations of time periods such as historical and present times.

• identify the significance of various ethnic and/or cultural celebrations.

Governing Our Community, State and Nation

Key Concepts:

• identify functions of governments such as establishing order, providing security, and managing conflict.

• identify governmental services in the community such as police and fire protection, libraries, schools, and parks and explain their value to the community.

• identify ways that public officials are selected, including election and appointment to office.

Historical Figures and Their Influence 

Key Concepts: 

• The student understands how historical figures helped shape the community, state, and nation.

  • • Thurgood Marshall 

    • Irma Rangel

    •  John Hancock 

    • Theodore Roosevelt

•  Describe how people and events have influenced local community history

•   The student engages in both short-term and sustained recursive inquiry processes for a variety of purposes. 

Location and Environment Impacts Our Communities

Key Concepts: 

• The student uses simple geographic tools, including maps and globes. The student is expected to:

  • • identify and use the information such as title, cardinal directions, and legend

    • create maps to show places and routes within the home, school, and community

• Identify major landforms and bodies of water, including each of the seven continents and each of the four oceans, on maps and globes

• Locate places, including the local community, Texas, the United States, the state capital, the U.S. capital, and the bordering countries of Canada and Mexico, on maps and globes.

• Identify ways in which people have modified the physical environment such as clearing land, building roads, using the land for agriculture, and drilling for oil.

•  Identify consequences of human modification of the physical environment.

• Identify ways people can conserve and replenish Earth’s resources.

Working in Our Community

Key Concepts: 

• Explain how work provides income to purchase goods and services, and explain the choices people can make about earning, spending, and saving money.

•  Distinguish between producing and consuming; identify ways in which people are both producers and consumers; and discuss the development of a product from a natural resource to a finished product.

• Describe how science and technology have affected communication, transportation, and recreation; and explain how science and technology have affected the ways in which people meet basic needs.

•  Identify individuals who have exhibited individualism and inventiveness such as Amelia Earhart and George Washington.