Enduring Understandings: important ideas that students should carry with them years beyond the instruction received this year.

• Maps, globes and other geographic tools are used to locate information about places.
• Physical and human characteristics of places define regions.
• Human activity changes and is affected by the physical environment.
• People migrate and settle in different places for a variety of reasons. 
• Decisions must be made regarding reasons for trading.

Essential Questions: most important “big picture” questions students should be able to answer after completing learning activities.

• What are the roles and jobs of people in our classroom and in the school? 
• Where do people do their jobs in the school building?
• What regions are found in the school?
• What is a neighborhood?  What people and places can I find in my neighborhood?
• Why do people move/migrate into and out of neighborhoods?  Why do people move to different houses?
• What animals migrate and why?
• How will a trade benefit me?

Standards and Benchmarks
Geography 1: Students know how to use and construct maps, globes, and other geographic tools to locate and derive information about people, places, and environments.
Benchmark A: Students know how to use maps, globes, and other geographic tools to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective.
Geography 2: Students know the physical and human characteristics of places, and use this knowledge to define and study regions and their patterns of change.
Benchmark 2A: Students know the physical and human characteristics of places
Geography 4: Students understand how economic, political, cultural and social processes interact to shape patterns of human populations, interdependence, cooperation and conflict.
Benchmark4 A: Students know the characteristics, location, distribution, and migration of human populations.
Geography 5: Students understand the effects of interactions between human and physical systems and changes in meaning, use, distribution, and importance of resources.
Benchmark5 B: Students know physical systems affect human systems.
Civics 1: Students understand the purposes of government and the basic constitutional principles of the United States' republican form of government.
Benchmark C1 A: Students know and understand what government is and what purpose it serves.
Civics 2: Students know how to use structure and function of local, state, and national government and how citizen involvement shapes public policy.
Benchmark B: Students know how power, authority, and responsibility are distributed, shared, and limited.
Economics 3: Students understand the results of trade, exchange, and interdependence among individuals, house holds, businesses, governments, and societies.
Benchmark 3A: Students understand that the exchange of goods and services creates economic interdependence and change.

Indicators
Geography
1. Use of Geographic Tools: Use tools (maps, globes, photographs, graphs, charts, and databases) to locate information about places.
2. and 3. Physical Processes/Physical and Human Characteristics of Places and Regions: Identify and describe human and physical characteristics of places, and use them to define regions.
4. Patterns of Human Population: Explain why people migrate and settle in different places
5. Human and Physical Systems: Describe ways humans change the physical environment and how the physical environment affects human activity.
Civics
1. Purpose of Government and US Constitutional Principles: Explain how people get, use, and misuse
power and authority.
2. Structure and Function of Government: Explain how governments are organized at the local, state,
and national levels and the responsibilities of each.
Economics
3. Trade, Exchange, and Economic Interdependence: Identify ways goods and services are distributed
through trade, exchange and interdependence.  

Lesson 1-3: Who Are You And What Do You Do?
Duration: 3 classes of 15-20 minutes
   
Enduring Understanding: Maps, globes, and other geographic tools are used to locate information about places.
Essential Question: Where do people do their jobs in the school building?
Assessment: On a map of selected locations in the school, match locations to pictures of people who work in each place.

Activities

• Ask students to tell you about different jobs in the school and people who do them. Ask where these people work in the school? Identify place names like office, library, cafeteria, etc.

• Plan a field trip to the office and other parts of school. Talk with students about the locations of the places you visit. An example question would be, "is the office in the front of the school, or the middle of the school?" When the field trip is over, create a floor map of the school with locations and place names.
• Discuss locations of various school rooms and people who work in them.
• Evaluate the map and talk with students about how it could be made even better. This involves the students in self evaluation and is a great component for higher learning.

Differentiation
Support: On the floor map, have the students stand on rooms that they know, tell where they are standing, and who works there.
Extension: Have students verbally give directions on how to get to different rooms using left/right directions.

Resources:  Mapping tools-large paper, crayons, yardstick, etc.

Lessons 4-7: What Is A Region?
Duration: 4 classes of 20-25 minutes
   
Enduring Understanding: Physical and human characteristics of places define regions.
Essential Question: What regions are found in the school?
Assessment: Students will verbally explain what regions are in the school. Students draw regions in their homes: eating, sleeping, playing, etc.

Activities

• Create and define specific regions in the classroom: kitchen area, bathroom, reading area, computer area, art area, etc. Discuss: what makes these areas regions? (it is a special area where only one type of activity takes place)
• Identify regions of the school (areas with common characteristics) primary and intermediate, play and work, classrooms and administration, teacher and student.
• Use the maps you made in the previous lesson to identify regions shown. Mark different regions with a specific color.
• Take a walk around the school, inside and out, to identify physical and human characteristics. See attached worksheet for ideas. Make a three column chart by folding a piece of paper lengthwise in a burrito fold. Copy the following example to begin your chart and continue to add more information as you walk through the school.

Differentiation
Support: Provide pictures of regions of the school and have students identify the regions.
Extension: Students will group the regions of the school and classify their uses by either students or teachers.

Resources: Mapping tools: attached worksheet

Lessons 8-13: Where Do I Live?
Duration: 6 classes of 25-30 minutes
   
Enduring Understanding: Human activity changes and is affected by the physical environment.
Essential Question: What is a neighborhood? What is my neighborhood?
Assessment: Match pictures of buildings and people to jobs.

Activities

• Social Studies Alive! Lesson 7 Activities 1 and 2
• Take a field trip/walking tour of a neighborhood to identify people and buildings, then discuss the following:
      -Is the neighborhood a region?
      -How do people change this region?
• Schedule community speakers-firemen, policemen, bankers, humane society workers, nurses, etc. Talk about where they work, what region is their building in, and how is where they work divided in to different regions.
• Identify buildings, outdoor places, and people located within the community to enhance further discussion.
• Social Studies Alive! Lesson 7 Activities 3, 4, and 5.

Differentiation
    Support: Match buildings with the people who work in the buildings.
    Extension: Social Studies Alive! Lesson 7 Activity 6.

Resources: Social Studies Alive! Lesson 7; Community speakers.

Lessons 14-16: Who Moves and Why?
Duration: 3 classes of 15-20 minutes
       
Enduring Understanding: People migrate and settle in different places for a variety of reasons.
Enduring Understanding: Why do people move into and out of neighborhoods? Why do people move to different houses?
Assessment: Ask students which reason might be the most important one for moving and why?For birds? For people?

Activities

• Discuss reasons for moving into or out of a neighborhood. Some examples are as follows jobs, family, military, climate, neighbors, etc. List all of the reasons that people would have for moving.
• Create a graph showing students who have moved from one location to another. A fun idea would be to use a map and stick pins to mark their migrations.
• Discuss migration as the moving of people or animals like butterflies and birds.
• View part of the video "Bird Migration" and then discuss how birds moving might be like people moving, and how it might be different.

Differentiation   
Support: Orally give a list of why people move.
Extension: Use the internet to find out about crane or butterfly migration.

Resources:  "Bird Migration" video

Lessons 17-19: What would you trade and why?
Duration: 3 classes of 15-20 minutes
         
Enduring Understanding: Decisions must be made regarding reasons for trading.
Essential Question: How will a trade benefit me?
Assessment:  Is trade always a good idea? Why, or why not?

Activities

• Learn and sing the song Trading to the tune of Do You Know the Muffin Man? 

• Use the book Pig and Crow to teach trade. See other online lessons.
• Bring in bags with small items for students to trade until most students are satisfied. Then debrief. When do people trade? Why do people trade? Is there a time when doing a trade is not a good idea?  Are there things that should never be traded? Why?
• Create a graph of the number of trades made.

Differentiation
Support: Have students explain the concepts they learned about trade to a teacher or a partner.
Extension: Find a picture or story book about a trade. Use it to continue further discussions about trade.

Resources:  websites in lesson

Parent Resources

In simple age-appropriate ways, let your child know about the roles and careers of people you know. Help them become aware of your neighbors and how they move in and out of neighborhoods. If you have moved or are planning to, give your kindergartener confidence by talking through the process. Help your child know they will make new friends, keep in touch with old friends, and have new fun in the new home and neighborhood. The more children understand what is happening in their environment, the more confident they will be.

ABCs of Elementary Years: These ABC Tips are designed to help you support your child’s learning in social studies during their years in elementary school.