The standards describe a connected body of historical, civic, and social understandings and competencies, and are a comprehensive foundation that all students should learn. They describe the knowledge and skills that students should acquire from Kindergarten through high school. At all levels, skills for thinking, inquiry, and participation in a democratic society are integrated throughout the standards.

Kindergarten through Grade 8 Standards Overview

History
This standard addresses the relationship between the past and the present. Students examine the relationship and significance of themes, concepts, and movements in world and United States histories; learn methods for comprehension, analysis, and interpretation of historical events and documents; and explore the resources available to them for research and problem solving.

Civics and Government
In this standard, students learn what it means to be a citizen with rights and responsibilities in several communities: local, state, national, and world. Students also learn to identify the services and information provided by their government, and about the major principles, values, and institutions of various political structures and governments across history.

Geography
This standard focuses on the relationships between physical and cultural characteristics of Earth. Students learn how Earth/sun relationships affect climate, culture, and world events; how humans have interacted with their environment over time; how geography has affected settlement and population; and how geographic factors influence economies and governments. Students also learn to identify and map physical features of their community, Indiana, the United States, and the world.

Economics
In this standard, students learn how economies, large and small, function. Supply and demand are covered in depth, and students learn to identify the production, consumption, and circulation of different types of resources in local, state, national, and world economies. Students also learn about employment and personal finance, as well as the influence of economic factors on major historical events.

Individuals, Society, and Culture
This standard addresses the influences, causes, and effects of cultural and social factors on human life and history. Students learn to identify themselves as members of various social and cultural groups, and learn to analyze the roles of diverse groups and individuals in history. Concepts relating to cultural heritage are introduced, and students examine the ways in which science, technology, and the arts have influenced life in their community, state, nation, and world.

K - 8 Grade Level Focus

Kindergarten: Living and Learning Together
Students focus upon their immediate environment, and emphasis is placed on social and civic learning experiences, including interaction with peers and respect for others.

Grade 1: Home, School, and Nearby Environments
Students examine changes in their own communities over time, explore the way people live and work together around the world, and learn about the rights and responsibilities of citizens as they interact in home, school, and local environments.

Grade 2: The Local and Regional Community
Students describe their basic rights and responsibilities in a democratic society as they examine local and regional communities in the present and past and how these communities meet people’s needs.

Grade 3: The Local Community and Communities Around the World
Students study development and change in the local community and in communities in other states and regions of the world, including how people have developed and used technology, as well as human and natural resources, in shaping communities and interacting with their environment. They also study how citizens participate in the government and civic life of communities.

Grade 4: Indiana in the Nation and the World
Students study Indiana and its relationships to regional, national, and world communities. They consider the influence of physical and cultural environments on the state’s growth and development and the principles and practices of citizenship and government in Indiana.

Grade 5: The United States - The Founding of the Republic
Students study the history of the United States to 1800, focusing on the influence of political, geographical, economic, and cultural factors on early development. Emphasis is placed upon the study of American Indian cultures, exploration, colonization, settlement, and the founding period that produced the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Grade 6: Peoples, Places, and Cultures in Europe and the Americas
Students study the regions and countries of Europe and the Americas, including geographical, historical, economic, political, and cultural relationships. The areas emphasized are Europe and North and South America, including Central America and the Caribbean.

Grade 7: Peoples, Places, and Cultures in Africa, Asia, and the Southwest Pacific
Students study the regions and nations of Africa, Asia, and the Southwest Pacific, including historical, geographical, economic, political, and cultural relationships. This study includes the following regions: Africa, Southwest and Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Southwest Pacific.

Grade 8: United States History - Growth and Development
Students briefly review the early history of the nation and then focus on national and state development through the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. Emphasis is placed upon principles of the United States and Indiana Constitutions and the influence of political, geographic, economic, and cultural factors on the development of Indiana and the United States.

High School Course Focus
At the high school level, academic standards for specific courses continue to build upon the skills and knowledge acquired at earlier stages of instruction. The high school courses focus on one of the five content areas that make up the social studies curriculum: history; civics and government; geography; economics; and individuals, society, and culture (psychology, sociology, and anthropology). The structure of the high school standards may vary since each course has its own organizing principles based on the major concepts or ideas that make up the discipline. The five content areas used as organizers for Grades K-8 continue to play an important role. At the high school level, one content area is the major focus of a course, while the other areas play supporting roles or become completely integrated into the subject matter.

World History and Civilization
This two-semester course emphasizes key events and developments in the past that influenced people and places in subsequent eras. Students are expected to practice skills and processes of historical thinking and inquiry that involve chronological thinking, comprehension, analysis and interpretation, research, issues-analysis, and decision-making. They examine the key concepts of continuity and change, universality and particularity, and unity and diversity among various peoples and cultures from the past to the present.

World Geography
Students use maps, globes, graphs, and information technology as they study global patterns of physical and cultural characteristics. Students are expected to apply knowledge of geographic concepts to research, inquiry, and participatory processes. Standards are organized around six elements: the world in spatial terms, places and regions, physical systems, human systems, environment and society, and the uses of geography.

United States History
This two-semester course builds upon concepts developed in previous studies of American history and emphasizes national development from the late nineteenth century into the twenty-first century. After review of fundamental ideas in the early development of the nation, students study the key events, people, groups, and movements in the late nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries as they relate to life in Indiana and the United States.

United States Government
This course provides a framework for understanding the purposes, principles, and practices of American government as established by the United States Constitution. Students are expected to understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens and how to exercise these rights and responsibilities in local, state, and national government.

Economics
This course examines the allocation of scarce resources and the economic reasoning used by people as consumers, producers, savers, investors, workers, voters, and as government agencies. Key elements include the study of scarcity, supply and demand, market structures, the role of government, national income determination, money and the role of financial institutions, economic stabilization, and trade.

Psychology
This course provides students the opportunity to explore psychology as the scientific study of mental processes and behavior. Areas of study include the Scientific Method, Development, Cognition, Personality, Assessment and Mental Health, and the Socio-Cultural and Biological Bases of Behavior.

Sociology
Students study human social behavior from a group perspective, including recurring patterns of attitudes and actions and how these patterns vary across time, among cultures, and in social groups. Students examine society, group behavior, and social structures, as well as the impact of cultural change on society, through research methods using scientific inquiry.

Geography and History of the World
Students use geographical and historical skills and concepts to deepen their understanding of the global themes contained in the standards. Geography and History of the World is an alternative to the standard World History course. The skills provide the research tools needed to think geographically and historically: ask geographic and historical questions; acquire geographic and historical information relevant to these questions; produce maps, timelines, and other graphic representations to organize and display the information acquired; interpret maps, timelines, and other graphic representations to solve geographic and historical problems and to analyze world events and suggest feasible solutions to world problems; reach conclusions about the geographic and historical questions posed and give verbal, written, graphic, and cartographic expression to conclusions. The concepts provide the intellectual tools needed to think geographically and historically: change over time, cultural landscape, diffusion, human environment interactions, human livelihoods, national character, origin, physical systems, sense of place, spatial distribution, spatial interaction, spatial organization, and spatial variation. These concepts are indicated in parentheses in each standards indicator and are defined at the end of the GHW standards document.