Unit 1 is essentially a story about where modern humans (Homo sapiens) came from and how we became the distinctive beings that we are today. Because this emergence took place over many millennia of slow evolution, we make the time meaningful by dividing it into eras, then marking its major turning points. To help students organize this span of time in their own minds, especially when chronological thinking is new to them, we ask just one Essential Question in this unit: What were the most important turning points in early human history? After introducing timelines, the unit introduces those who built them, through the careful study and revision of data: social scientists such as archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and geographers.
The long Paleolithic Era, subject of this unit’s second cluster of lessons, comprises 99% of human prehistory — from about 2.6 million years ago to the end of the Pleistocene Epoch around 12,000 years ago. Condensed into a series of turning points for this unit, the innovations of the time present as one wondrous development after another: the evolution of bipedal bodies and neurally complex brains from those of our hominid predecessors, the control of fire, the peopling of the earth through migration, and the Upper Paleolithic Cognitive Revolution that led to symbolic language, as well as rock art, sculpture, cave painting and music. By the end of the period, the modern human mind that we know and use today had come into being.
The Neolithic Era, by contrast, has been brief and relatively recent, though utterly transformative in terms of lifestyle and the pace of change. The third cluster of lessons in this unit describes the big breakthroughs (turning points) of this age: the domestication of plants and animals, the surpluses of food that agriculture made possible, the freeing up of time that led to specialization, and with it new products and trade. Villages and eventually towns grew up near rivers and new patterns of social organization took hold; this was the advent of complex societies. Students encounter these developments one by one, through a variety of sources and through their own reasoning about how changes might have occurred. Along the way, they practice making cause and effect claims, summarizing their learning, and marshaling evidence in support of arguments — chiefly about whether farming or foraging led to a better lifestyle, and about which turning points were the most important.
Unit 2 is the first of three global regions that comprise the content for the remainder of the sixth grade year in social studies. In Western Asia and North Africa, ancient peoples developed the world’s earliest known civilizations and cities, with an array of innovations so fundamental that your students interact with them almost every waking hour of their day! (Of course, many of these were discovered independently by ingenious humans in other global regions during the millennia that followed.) One of these innovations, the development of writing systems (and the modern ability to translate them) has allowed social scientists to reconstruct a remarkably vivid picture of how people behaved and what they pondered in these earliest complex societies. Students have the opportunity to investigate many areas of lived experience in Unit 6.2. Central themes of study include daily life in families and communities; religious beliefs and practices; and government, leadership and civic relations.
The unit opens with Cluster 1, exploring the region’s physical and human geography. While learning its unique characteristics, students are also introduced to several fundamental geography tools and concepts they will use across their social studies education. Regarding geographic content, rivers and waterways are an important throughline connecting the geographic and historical clusters of Unit 6.2. Students think about the role of water in an arid region as they probe their Essential Question of how the physical environment influences people’s ways of living. How did water matter for ancient river valley societies? How does access to it matter now?
With this geographic foundation in place, Cluster 2 and Cluster 3 introduce major Bronze Age societies of ancient Western Asia and North Africa: the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians and Nubians. The Mesopotamia lessons focus on social organization, new institutions like governments and laws, and the pros and cons of life in a complex society. Students also learn how time is described and represented, terminology they will practice using all year. While studying Egypt and Nubia, students consider how people’s ways of life were imbued with their religion and mythology. They also gain practice in inquiry — asking questions and then answering them using sources — and in considering the relevance and credibility of sources for particular questions.
A central question in historical studies is what caused some societies to collapse and others to rise. The fourth cluster examines that question, looking at the multiple causes of the “Bronze Age Collapse” between 1250 and 1150 BCE, and then at two of the West Asian societies that became dominant in its wake: the Phoenicians and the Persians. These Iron Age powers thrived using models of civic organization and governance unusual for the time, concepts that are the focus of this brief cluster.
Lastly, students circle back to religion. Over ten lessons, they learn about three Abrahamic religions originating in the region — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — that went on to reshape world history. The goal in these lessons is for students to learn, through a stations-based constructivist approach, the basic features of these faiths. From their origins to their teachings and from their holy books to their branches today, students gain a picture of religions as a set of beliefs and practices that are internally diverse and ever changing.
This unit on the geography and ancient history of sub-Saharan Africa seeks to illuminate the longevity, diversity and interconnectedness of Africa’s civilizations and societies while providing opportunities for students to connect Africa’s ancient past with its present. Remarkable new research — utilizing linguistics, DNA analysis, and oral knowledge to supplement archaeology and written records — has opened new vistas on Africa’s history. Scholars have established that the complex societies of pre-colonial Africa were numerous and diverse, the result of particular interactions between humans and their environments.
The unit is organized thematically and with a regional approach. Cluster One introduces the physical and human geography of the continent, probing the theme of human and environmental interaction. Cluster Two compares and contrasts the characteristics of Africa’s ancient complex societies with a focus on community structures, social roles, and the passing of knowledge through written and oral tradition. Cluster Three explores the themes of trade and cross-cultural exchange, expanding economic concepts while promoting the understanding that African communities were global and interconnected. Cluster Four is a brief investigation of religious traditions in pre-colonial Africa (Christianity, Islam and indigenous religions). The cluster highlights flexibility and adaptation, leading to a pair of lessons on African religious tolerance past and present and a take-action project for schools or communities.
Lastly, across all clusters, the curriculum affords the opportunity for students to question ethnocentric understandings of Africa. By investigating sub-Saharan Africa’s geography and ancient cultures through this set of lenses, students will be set up to develop an accurate and multifaceted vision of its history.
This sixth grade social studies unit launches a study of the Ancient Americas that will prove foundational for students’ study of major empires like the Inca and Aztec in high school world history classes. This curriculum focuses students’ attention on particular cultures of early Mesoamerica, such as the Olmec, Teotihuacanos, and the Maya, while acknowledging the advances of Andean civilizations such as Caral Supe (Norte Chico) and Chavín de Huantar and Caribbean cultures such as the Taíno. Students investigate practices of trade and economy, technology, ritual, diplomacy and leadership for these societies. The unit highlights the intertwining of daily life and sacred belief within these cultures. And it guides students to think comparatively as they assess the similar and different features of ancient American societies and those of other world regions they have studied this year.
The cities of the early Americas are an important throughline for Unit 4. Large and in some cases closely planned cities were a special feature of life on this continent. The unit ends with a Project-Based Learning exercise that doubles as the Summative Assessment. Introducing an element of student choice, the project allows students to select their own city of the ancient Americas to research. Students reflect on how that city mirrored its people’s priorities and beliefs; they also apply a lens of civically-engaged thinking to their own modern city or town of residence, considering how these places might be improved to align with important values and concerns of our own time. Last, this project rounds out the unit’s thematic work on Sustainable Development Goal #11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, which is threaded throughout Unit 4.