World Studies (Geography and History)
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Course Overview
This course addresses and assesses the Colorado Academic Standards in both World History and Geography. Each unit is built so teachers can choose the entry point or focus on the unit: chronology, geography, or thematic understanding. Whichever way a teacher focuses the unit, all students address the same standards.
Students analyze and evaluate primary and secondary sources to examine ideas, events, and historical periods that shaped World History (from the Renaissance to the present). Students use the historical method of inquiry to formulate questions and identify patterns of continuity and change over time for significant historical periods within and among cultures and societies. Along with these historical tools, students use geographic tools and resources to analyze Earth's human and physical systems to evaluate relationships between people and places. Students explore issues that unify cultural and political groups as well as divide or separate people. This includes an analysis of independence movements, colonization, decolonization, neo-colonization, genocide, and other atrocities. Students analyze and evaluate multiple viewpoints on problems and policies regarding these issues as well as other environmental issues related to human activities, population distribution, and resource use. The course concludes with students researching and working to solve problems that connect to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and present their learning and ideas to their peers and beyond.
Year at a Glance
Year at a Glance
Unit 1 - Social Studies Skills: Elements of Culture and Global Perspectives (Aug)
Unit 2 - Historical Development and Impacts of World Religions (Sept)
Unit 3 - Construction of Power (October)
Unit 4 - Revolutions of Thought, Power, and Political Space (Nov-Dec)
Unit 5 - The Evolution of Colonialism (Jan)
Unit 6 - Conflict and Cooperation: Genocide and the Search for Justice (Feb-March)
Unit 7 - Growth and Globalization: Population, Migration, and Development (April)
Unit 8 - Citizenship, Solutions, and Agency (May)
The focus of each unit could include one or more of the following:
Chronology Focus
Chronology Focus
Anchor Events for
Unit 1: Skills focus (not chronology)
Unit 2: Varied
Unit 3: Industrial Revolution
Unit 4: Latin American Revolutions
Unit 5: The Berlin Conference
Unit 6: Armenian Genocide
Unit 7: Creation of the United Nations
Unit 8: Contemporary
Geography Focus
Geography Focus
Regional focus for
Unit 1: Skills focus (not regionally)
Unit 2: North Africa and South West Asia
Unit 3: Europe
Unit 4: Latin America and Beyond
Unit 5: Sub Saharan Africa
Unit 6: Varied
Unit 7: Asia
Unit 8: Varied
Thematic Focus
Thematic Focus
Conceptual focus for
Unit 1: Skills focus (not conceptual)
Unit 2: Cultural Diffusion
Unit 3: Nation Building
Unit 4: Revolutions
Unit 5: Imperialism: colonialism, decolonization, and Neo-colonialism
Unit 6: Genocide and International Response
Unit 7: Globalization
Unit 8: Sustainable Development
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