European Exploration and the Age of Discovery

Locate major world features, use latitude and longitude coordinates, and navigate using map keys, compass directions, and scale bars.

Analyze physical, topographic, and climate maps to explore spatial patterns and create an original thematic map.

Identify major U.S. landforms and river systems while exploring the states, capitals, and defining characteristics of the five geographic regions, including Alaska and Hawaii.

Examine how physical geography, glaciation, and natural resources shape human adaptation, regional interdependence, and environmental inquiry.

Explore how diverse Native nations developed distinct cultures, housing, and technologies adapted to the diverse geographic regions of North America.

Investigate Native trade networks, oral traditions, enduring tribal sovereignty, and methods for conducting research on Indigenous history.

Analyze the causes, technological innovations, encounters, and global consequences of early European voyages to the Americas.

Explore early English settlements and compare the geography, economies, and self-governance of the New England, Middle, and Southern colonial regions.

Examine colonial labor institutions, transatlantic trade, daily routines, artisan trades, and regional interactions in early America.

Analyze the economic, political, and social causes of colonial unrest leading up to the outbreak of armed conflict with Great Britain.

Examine the Declaration of Independence, key turning points, diverse wartime contributions, and the victory that established American independence.

Explore how the US Constitution was created and how the legislative, executive, and judicial branches work together with checks and balances.

Examine the Bill of Rights, how power is shared across national, state, and local governments, and the rights and responsibilities of engaged citizens.

Investigate national territorial growth, overland trails, transportation innovations, and the severe impacts on Native American nations during 19th-century expansion.

Explore early lead mining, statehood, agricultural shifts, and historical settlement patterns in 19th-century Wisconsin.

Examine the economic differences, legislative compromises, abolitionist resistance, and political events that led to sectional division and the outbreak of the Civil War.

Analyze key military turning points, experiences on the battlefront and home front, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the constitutional expansion of rights during Reconstruction.

Understand fundamental economic concepts including scarcity, opportunity cost, factors of production, supply and demand, and market competition.

Explore how specialization, banking, personal budgeting, and international trade connect individuals to the broader global economy.

Master social studies research methods: asking compelling questions, evaluating diverse sources, identifying bias, and building evidence-based claims.