- Evanston/Skokie School District 65
- Social Sciences
Social Sciences
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Vision
Students from all backgrounds investigate the social sciences using multiple perspectives to build cultural awareness and critical consciousness as a foundation for taking informed action.
Illinois State Standards for Social Sciences
The Illinois State Standards cultivate civic mindedness, historical thinking, economic decision making, geographic reasoning, and psychological and sociological intellect across all disciplines and grade levels.
The standards fall into two complementary categories: inquiry skills and disciplinary concepts.
- Inquiry skills involve questioning, investigating, reasoning, and responsible action.
- Disciplinary concepts make use of social science ideas, principles, and content to pursue answers to the questions generated by student inquiries.
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Common K-12 Definitions
Inquiry: An ongoing cycle of learning to use knowledge at increasingly complex levels as a way to integrate content. Through the inquiry process, students (individually and or collaboratively) identify issues, pose questions, investigate answers, pose more questions, weigh the evidence, come to conclusions, and take action on their learning.
Inquiry Skills: Skills and dispositions that students need to meet the challenges of college, career, and civic life in the 21st century. Inquiry skills are used by students while applying disciplinary concepts to construct essential and supporting questions and determine helpful sources to conduct investigations and take informed action.
Essential Questions: Open-ended questions that focus on a big idea. These questions are enduring and centered on unresolved issues.
Supporting Questions: These questions can be answered through descriptions, definitions, and processes on which there is general agreement. These questions help formulate an answer to the essential question.
Disciplinary Concepts: Ideas, principles, and content at the heart of understanding the social sciences.
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K-12 Inquiry Skills
The inquiry standards include the following areas:
Developing Questions and Planning Inquiries
- Constructing Essential Questions
- Constructing Supporting Questions
- Determining Helpful Sources
Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence
- Gathering and Evaluating Sources
- Developing Claims and Using Evidence
Communicating Conlusions and Taking Informed Action
- Communicating Conclusions
- Critiquing Conclusions
- Taking Informed Action
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K-12 Disciplinary Concepts
The disciplinary concepts are divided into the four core disciplines of social science and include the following areas:
Civics
- Civic and Political Institutions
- Participation and Deliberation: Applying Civic Virtues and Democratic Principles
- Processes, Rules, and Laws
Geography
- Geographic Representations: Spatial Views of the World
- Human-Environment Interaction: Place, Regions, and Culture
- Human Population: Spatial Patterns and Movements
- Global Interconnections: Changing Spatial Patterns
Economics and Financial Literacy
- Economic Decision Making
- Exchange and Markets
- The National and Global Economy
History
- Change, Continuity, and Context
- Perspectives
- Historical Sources and Evidence
- Causation and Argumentation
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K-8 Social Sciences Resources
At-A-Glance: K-8
Curriculum Maps
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Supporting Your Student
Illinois Social Science Standards K-12 (English) | (Spanish)
Illinois Social Science Standards for Inquiry K-12 (English) | (Spanish)
Take-home craft activities, all-ages can experience traditional and modern aspects of American Indian cultures. Visit Family Zone website... Family activities designed to be used at home. Visit PBS website... -
Key Areas of Focus (For the Upcoming School Year)
The impact of this work is measured by:
- Student Experience Surveys and Focus Groups (example prompts)
- Classroom Artifacts (e.g. performance tasks)
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Contact
To contact the Social Sciences Department, please call (847) 859-8037. To reach a specific member of the Curriculum & Instruction Team, please visit our staff directory and search 'Curriculum & Instruction Department'.
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Documents for Review Relevant to this Department