Social Studies Grade 6

October 17, 2023

Dear 6C parents,

Since conferences begin on Friday, I’d like to share an update on what your sixth grader has been learning in social studies class.

We began the year by asking a series of big-picture questions: What does it mean to be civilized? What is culture? Can historical knowledge “change”? The discussions and activities that ensued initiated us into the world of historical investigation, the ongoing debates about how we know information about the ancient past, and the limits of human certainty. It was thrilling to experience each student’s Culture Capture slideshow, as they shared with the class aspects of their families and traditions that, to them, comprise their own culture. Experiential activities such as an impromptu home-to-school route map sketch and a textbook scavenger hunt coupled these big questions with practical social studies skills: interpreting and creating maps; utilizing the table of contents, index, and other reference source tools; and communicating clearly with others through text and images.

Our study of geography found us theorizing about how human populations might build cultures within a range of environmental conditions that exist on Earth, and how and why these cultures might develop differently. Once the class had become sufficiently engaged in these speculations, we brought in our digital textbook for more background information. (The more interested you already have become in the topic, the less “dry” the textbook seems to you!) Pairs of students then created and presented visual depictions of the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and urbanization, deploying the social studies mindsets of cause and effect, compare and contrast, and representative examples.

We’re currently wrapping up a study of early human tool creation, which culminated in a memorable soap-carving activity at Greystone Park and a subsequent museum exhibition of each student’s attempt to use a “hammerstone” to design and produce a workable tool. ACDS grandfather Mike Laine presented to the full sixth grade and passed around his fascinating collection of ancient human artifacts, adding further context as the students finalized their exhibits. This study will itself soon lead into a broader exploration of ancient innovations, representing civilizations from around the world and connecting, always, to our understanding of our own civilization and the challenges we hope to overcome in our current time.

Periodically in our curriculum, I’ve built in activities to highlight not only what we know about ancient civilizations but how we know it. For example, we examined photos of ancient sites before and after their excavations, to observe how the physical environment really does “win” over the centuries, and watched short videos of archaeologists at work, from Pompeii to here on the West Coast. We also tried out the technique of “relative dating” by using visual clues and background knowledge to sort images of iPhones based on when we suspect they were introduced to the public, a daunting task made easier by adopting the mindset of an archaeologist.

We’re looking forward to our field trip on November 7! Thank you to those who have volunteered to drive; we now have the required number of drivers, and I’ll be sending everyone more information soon in a separate email.

You are always invited to visit my website, where you can view all of our curricular documents, the syllabus, and these parent updates, which will continue to appear in your inbox twice each trimester. If you haven’t been checking the Homeroom app regularly for photos from our activities, please do. I welcome questions, feedback, and ideas, and I look forward to chatting with many of you over the next week. See you at conferences!

Sincerely,
Mike Fishback

November 16, 2023

Dear 6C parents,

As we close the first trimester, here's a new update about what your children have been up to in social studies class.

Our field trip to the Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center gave the students a closeup look at how ancient technologies they have studied, such as the Hippocratic sleeve and the Roman aqueducts, continue to be improved upon in 2023 to provide reliable water service to a city that would not otherwise have access to clean, drinkable water. And in the same way that archaeologists estimate relative dates in order to create an ancient historical narrative, the students were invited to estimate the number of years it would take for various plastics to survive before breaking down into microplastics, in order to design alternative products that would be more environmentally friendly. The intersection of ancient and modern technologies, methods, and problems was a huge theme of the trip. Thank you to all of you who drove and joined us for the tours and activities!

Back in the classroom, we sorted dozens of ancient innovations by category and civilization before proceeding to learn in depth about the cultures that produced the widest variety of important technologies and intellectual concepts. As we gathered information from our digital textbook, online videos, and other sources, we launched into thought-provoking discussions about big questions related to these achievements: Do societies innovate despite being at war, or because of war? Is time a natural phenomenon or a human invention? How has Eurocentrism distorted our understanding of the origins of everything from flush toilets to the Pythagorean theorem? The class rose to the occasion and enjoyed the sophistication of these lessons.

Earlier this week, the students held a “trade show” for which each trader was responsible for two ancient innovations: one chosen by them and another assigned to them. More than a mere presentation, this project took place on an interactive trading floor, complete with student-created business cards, sales ledgers, and adults from the staff mingling with student buyers and sellers. For half the time, each student served as a buyer, tasked with equipping a brand new “ancient” civilization with technologies that might help them survive in a particular environmental circumstance. They then switched roles to become a seller, figuring out the best “pitch” for connecting the wonders of their products to the specific needs of a new set of buyers. Consequently, this activity served as a culminating project, encompassing our trimester-long study of both geography and achievements.

When we return from Thanksgiving break, we will begin our studies of religion and social structure in the ancient world. It’s really a pleasure to teach this group of students, who are so eager to learn and invested in their projects. As always, you may stay up to date using my website, and I always welcome your feedback and questions. Have a wonderful holiday!

Sincerely,
Mike Fishback

January 28, 2024

Dear 6C parents,

We are now halfway through Trimester 2 (and the school year!), so here’s a new update about what your sixth grader has been doing in social studies class.

Upon returning from Thanksgiving break, we launched into a study of creation stories from around the world. Groups of students read, analyzed, and swapped stories from various ancient civilizations, and as a class we harnessed these group notes to identify similarities and differences and to draw inferences about each civilization’s values. This activity then morphed into a structured writing exercise, providing training and practice in skills such as outlining, sequencing, hyperlinking, parenthetical citation, and formatting of a Works Cited list. I was impressed with the commitment and energy these students displayed while working on their writing.

Only after this introduction did we begin using the term “religion.” This was purposeful, since our objective was to approach religion as scholars, maintaining some distance while still respecting and honoring the variety of belief systems in the ancient world, some of which continue to flourish in our modern society. As a class, we attempted to define religion and identify reasons why human civilizations have, without fail, developed religion as a core aspect of their lives. In our last class of the calendar year, we compared three winter festivals of light – Diwali, Hanukkah, and Christmas – to establish the role religious observance has played in keeping humans hopeful in dark times.

In January, we embarked on a multi-stage research project on ancient Egyptian religion. Small groups of students each selected a social science – history, geography, archeology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, or ethics – and conducted their research on Egyptian religion through that lens. (I required them to use book sources exclusively for a whole class period before they could consult the internet, and then only to search specifically for what they hadn’t found in print. It was a great review of tools such as table of contents, index, and glossary.) After sharing their findings within their groups, they then “mixed it up” by forming new groups where each social science lens was represented by a single student. Using Venn diagrams, they analyzed the overlap between different approaches to thinking about religion, culminating in short visual presentations to the class.

Most recently, we have been discussing polytheistic and monotheistic deities and history. We looked at major ancient polytheistic religions and the gods that many of them have in common. We’re currently in the midst of understanding the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, after which we will touch on Hinduism and a number of East Asian belief systems. This past week, we attended a special presentation by our “Big History” elective teacher (and former ACDS parent) Steve Huhn on the history of the Israelites, during which he made some interesting connections to the ongoing war in Israel-Palestine.

One thing I’ve come to appreciate about teaching ancient civilizations thematically, as opposed to touring through a handful of civilizations and learning everything about each of them at once, is that the students are always thinking about the bigger picture, viewing the content not as an end in itself but as a reason to voice genuine questions about the world and about humanity. Our class periods feature heavy topics but are lighthearted in tone, propelled by the enthusiasm and curiosity of this incredible group of students. Feel free to visit my website to access the Drive folder for a peek at some of our activities. I always appreciate hearing from families about how the class is going for their kids. Thank you for your partnership!

Sincerely,
Mike Fishback

March 25, 2024

Dear 6C parents,

Trimester report cards come out this week, so I’m sending you a new social studies curriculum update to give context for what I discuss in your child’s report.

Since early February, our class has been examining the design of civilizations, first in terms of social structure, currently in terms of politics, and later this spring in terms of economics.

We began by briefly viewing visual diagrams representing various social structures and then embarking on an individual challenge: create a diagram, based on your own observations and experiences, of the social structure of the Silicon Valley region in 2024. As students completed their visuals and wrote about the choices they made in crafting them, a number of important themes revealed themselves, incorporating questions of leadership, status, inequality, gender, age, and power. We’ve continued to circle back to each of these themes in meaningful ways ever since.

Next, groups of students consulted historical sources to take notes on the social structure of a variety of ancient civilizations, with the goal of drawing inferences about what each civilization valued most. The follow-up writing assignment was a proposal, directed toward our contemporary American civilization, discussing one aspect of our own social structure that we should keep and another that we should reconsider, using examples from ancient civilizations as supporting evidence. Students made use of a graphic organizer to sequence their ideas and practiced once again with creating a Works Cited list.

A second writing assignment focused on articulating a claim, supporting it with reasons, and then refuting a compelling counterargument. The question the students wrote on had to do with the extent to which a social hierarchy is good for a civilization. During class, they circulated their papers, suggesting new reasons to back up each other’s claims and proposing strong counterarguments; in the final essay, they gave credit where credit was due by placing classmates’ names in parenthetical citations. This exercise allowed them to practice the skill of avoiding plagiarism without the simultaneous burden of scholarly research, and it turned the normally laborious process of citation into something exciting and social.

As the calendar turned to March, we partnered with the TLC classes for a two-day experiential simulation requiring students, first on their own and then in groups, to secure “food,” “water,” and “shelter” to stay alive in an early civilization. This prompted philosophical questions about the benefits and drawbacks of working with others in a society, and the need for a political system of some sort. For the last few weeks, we have been discussing and examining examples of various governmental structures: totalitarianism and monarchy, oligarchy, socialism and communism (not ancient, I know!), democracy, and anarchy. We’ve gone back into the history books to learn about specific ways ancient civilizations set up their politics, ranging from the Chinese civil service to Egyptian theocracy, and of course Athenian direct democracy.

Some of you know that my passion is U.S. politics, so this portion of the curriculum has been a ton of fun for me to teach. Our class recently experimented with eight different approaches to voting, substituting colors for candidates and evaluating each approach based on how authentically it reflects the will of “demos,” the people. We studied direct vs. representative democracy by trying our best to read the text of California’s Proposition 1, which narrowly passed at the ballot box earlier this month, and imagining when a direct vote of the people on individual laws might work well or be a well-intentioned mistake. And we had a dynamic discussion about the privileges of leaders in a democracy, incorporating the accusations against both Presidents Biden and Trump regarding their retention of classified documents: Should the government be able to investigate its leader for crimes? Should a leader be able to pardon themself for crimes they might have committed? We’ll continue to preview some of the upcoming election’s more unprecedented questions as they relate to our ongoing studies.

As always, I invite you to visit my website, where you can see these activities for themselves in our Drive folder, and I welcome feedback and conversation regarding your child’s experience in the class. Happy spring!

Sincerely,
Mike Fishback

June 3, 2024

Dear 6C parents,

Before we end the year, a final update on what your child has been studying in social studies, followed by a preview of the next two years:

This spring, our class transformed into a law school! We first evaluated a variety of ancient codes of law through a card-matching activity in which students tried to match crime cards with their corresponding consequence cards. Energetic conversations ensued about the severity and specificity of punishments and about double standards involving gender, age, and slave status. We also looked at different ways ancient laws came about and who had the privilege of determining what the law would criminalize. The students then composed “guidebooks” directed at ancient lawmakers, advising them on what types of laws are most just, efficient, ethical, and successful, based on their studies and values.

To introduce our final topic, economics, the sixth grade participated in a bartering activity. Each student began with a small colored paper clip and worked their way up to more valuable items as they traded among an increasingly wide and diverse set of classmates. This led to the question of what money is – essentially a way to barter more easily. Our class learned about the history of ancient money, coins, and banking, along with the present-day versions, and I later challenged the students to write explanations of how these complex systems work. We also delved into sophisticated concepts such as opportunity cost, marginal utility, and market and command economies. Your children seem ready for graduate school!

For the final project, each student identified a contemporary issue they care about and then went about determining which aspects of ancient civilizations our own society can learn from as we try to tackle the problem. Topics included climate, hunger, homelessness, crime, drugs, digital currency, artificial intelligence, wars over land and religion, treatment of women, and the state of democracy. As they shared their work through slideshows, posters, skits, animation, and essays, it was evident that there was much wisdom in the room.

This all makes me very excited for next year, which will culminate in Model United Nations, an opportunity for the students to propose and reach consensus on solutions to global problems using all the tools of culture, history, and politics that they will have engaged with in their world studies curriculum. Then in eighth grade, we will focus on American government, social movements, and foreign policy choices, culminating in an unforgettable week-long trip to DC and New York to see some of our curriculum in action. I can’t wait to continue the journey with this group of students.

Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful summer. It is a joy and an honor to teach your children.

Sincerely,

Mike Fishback