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.

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

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

Scope and Sequence: K-5; 6-8

At-A-Glance: K-8

Curriculum Maps

• Kindergarten Curriculum Map
• First Grade Curriculum Map
• Second Grade Curriculum Map
• Third Grade Curriculum Map
• Fourth Grade Curriculum Map
• Fifth Grade Curriculum Map
• Sixth Grade Curriculum Map
• Seventh Grade Curriculum Map
• Eighth Grade Curriculum Map

The impact of this work is measured by:

• Student Experience Surveys and Focus Groups (example prompts)
• Classroom Artifacts (e.g. performance tasks)