Social Studies Curriculum

Grade 3 - Unit 1

• Themes, Understandings And Overarching Essential Questions For This Unit
  
• Specific Essential Questions For This Unit
  
• By The End Of This Unit Students Should Know
  
• By The End Of This Unit Students Should Be Able To
  
• Enrichment Resources

Themes, Understandings And Overarching Essential Questions For This Unit

• Understanding: Our past helps us to understand how we live today.

• Our present affects how we and others will live in the future.

• Essential Question: How does the past influence the present and the future?

• Understanding: Where we live affects how we live.

• Essential Question: How does where someone lives affect how they live?

Specific Essential Questions For This Unit

• How do communities around the world change and develop?

• How does geography affect the way people in different communities live?

By The End Of This Unit Students Should Know

• Key Ideas: Communities change (positively and negatively) over time.

• Vocabulary: change, community, culture, generation, independence, interdependence

• Key Ideas: All communities are influenced by the 5 themes of geography (location, relationships/interactions, place, region, movement).

• Vocabulary: border, coastline, canyon, cardinal direction, climate, compass rose, Continent, desert, equator, geography, globe, gulf, hill, intermediate direction, island, key, lake, landform, latitude, longitude, legend, location, map, mountain, ocean, peninsula, plains, prime meridian, region, river, scale, time zone, valley

By The End Of This Unit Students Should Be Able To

• Explain how and why Long Beach has changed over time.

• Compare the changes in Long Beach to changes in another community.

• Interpret a map.

• Give directions using a map.

• Identify geographic landforms.

• Use the 5 themes of geography to explain how humans are influenced by the environment.

Enrichment Resources