Geography and Map Skills: Reading Our World

Use map elements, grid systems, and geographic tools to locate places and analyze spatial features across Earth.

Explore the physical geography, state capitals, economic hubs, and cultural heritage of the Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest regions.

Analyze the geography, state capitals, and natural resources of the Southwest and West, and examine how all U.S. regions rely on interstate trade.

Explore how diverse Indigenous nations across North America developed distinct cultures, governance structures, and technologies adapted to their regional environments.

Examine Native ecological knowledge, oral traditions, trade systems, and the ongoing exercise of tribal sovereignty.

Examine the motives and technological advancements driving early European voyages, along with Spanish expeditions and their early interactions with Indigenous peoples.

Analyze French, English, and Dutch exploration in North America and evaluate the lasting ecological, cultural, and demographic consequences of early cross-cultural encounters.

Explore early English settlements and compare the geography, government, and culture of the New England, Middle, and Southern colonial regions.

Examine Atlantic trade networks, labor systems including indentured servitude and slavery, and daily life and work in colonial America.

Examine the taxes, protests, and escalating tensions between the American colonies and Great Britain that led to the outbreak of war.

Explore the Declaration of Independence, diverse perspectives during the war, and the military turning points that secured American victory.

Examine how new territories, overland trails, gold strikes, and transportation breakthroughs accelerated movement across the American continent.

Investigate the forced displacement of Indigenous nations, regional frontier growth in the Midwest, and diverse viewpoints on Manifest Destiny.

Examine the economic and moral divisions between North and South, the resistance of abolitionists and freedom seekers, and the events leading up to the Civil War.

Investigate key battles, the experiences of soldiers and civilians, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the constitutional efforts to rebuild the nation during Reconstruction.

Explore the creation of the U.S. Constitution and analyze the distinct roles and checks and balances among the three branches of federal government.

Examine fundamental constitutional rights, powers shared across government levels, and the essential responsibilities of active citizens in their communities.

Understand fundamental economic concepts including needs versus wants, scarcity, opportunity cost, and the resources required to produce goods and services.

Explore how market prices are set through supply and demand, how money and budgeting work, and why communities engage in global trade.

Formulate evidence-based claims and present social studies inquiry findings across diverse formats, graphic organizers, digital media, and museum exhibits.

Tailor presentations to diverse audiences, critically evaluate claims and biases, and participate in evidence-based peer critique and defense.