Diocese of Sacramento
SOCIAL STUDIES
ACADEMIC CONTENT
STANDARDS
for grade 6
The intellectual skills noted below are
to be learned through, and applied to, content standards for grades 6-8. They
are to be assessed only in conjunction with the content standards in grades 6-8
and are not to be assessed in isolation.
Historical and Social Sciences Analysis Skills
In addition to the standards for grades 6-8, students demonstrate the
following intellectual reasoning, reflection and research skills:
Grades 6-8
Chronological and Spatial
Thinking
1. students explain how major events are
related to each other in time
2. students construct various timelines
of key events, people, and periods of the historical era being studied
3. students use a variety of maps and
documents to identify physical and cultural features of neighborhoods, cities,
states, and countries and to explain the historical migration of people,
expansion and disintegration of empires, and the growth of economic systems
Research, Evidence and Point of
View
1. students frame questions that can be
answered by historical study and research
2. students distinguish fact from opinion
in historical narratives and stories
3. students distinguish relevant from
irrelevant information, essential from incidental information, and verifiable
from unverifiable information in historical narratives and stories
4. students assess the credibility of
primary and secondary sources and draw sound conclusions from them
5. students detect the different
historical points of view on historical events and determine the context in
which the historical statements were made (the questions asked, sources used,
author's perspectives)
Historical Interpretation
1. students explain the central issues
and problems of the past, placing people and events in a matrix of time and
place
2. students understand and distinguish
cause, effect, sequence, and correlation in historical events, including the
long- and short-term causal relations
3. students explain the sources of
historical continuity and how the combination of ideas and events explains the
emergence of new patterns
4. students recognize the role of chance,
oversight, and error in history
5. students recognize interpretations of
history are subject to change as new information is uncovered
6. students interpret basic indicators of
economic performance and conduct cost/benefit analyses in order to analyze
economic and political issues
Grade
Six
World
History and Geography: Ancient Civilizations
Students in grade six expand
their understanding of history by studying the people and events that ushered
in the dawn of the major western and non-western ancient civilizations. Geography is of special significance in
the development of the human story.
Continued emphasis is placed on the everyday lives, problems and
accomplishments of people, their role in developing social, economic and
political structures, as well as in establishing and spreading ideas that
helped transform the world forever.
Students develop higher levels of critical thinking by considering why
civilizations developed
where and when they did, why they became dominant and why they
declined. Students analyze the
interactions among various cultures, emphasizing their enduring contributions
and the link, despite time, between the contemporary and ancient worlds.
6.1 Students describe what is known through
archaeological studies of the early physical and cultural development of
mankind from the Paleolithic Era to the agricultural revolution, in terms of:
1. The hunter-gatherer
societies and their characteristics, including the development of tools and the
use of fire
2. The location of human
communities that populated the major regions of the world and how humans
adapted to a variety of environments
3. The climatic changes
and human modifications of the physical environment that gave rise to the
domestication of plants and animals and the increase in the sources of clothing
and shelter
6.2 Students analyze the geographic, political,
economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt,
and Kush, in terms
of:
1. The location and
description of the river systems, and physical settings that supported
permanent settlement and early civilizations
2. The development of
agricultural techniques that permitted the production of economic surplus and
the emergence of cities as centers of culture and power
3. The relationship
between religion and the social and political order in Mesopotamia and Egypt
4. Compare monotheism and
polytheism.
5. The significance of Hammurabi’s code
6. Egyptian art and
architecture
7. The location and
description of the role of Egyptian trade in the eastern Mediterranean and Nile Valley
8. The significance of the
lives of Queen Hatshepsut and Ramses
the Great
9. The location of the Kush civilization and its political, commercial, and
cultural relations with Egypt
10. The evolution of language and its
written forms
6.3 Students analyze the geographic, political,
economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of the
Ancient Hebrews, in terms of:
1. The origins and
significance of Judaism as the first monotheistic religion based of the concept
of one God who sets down moral laws for humanity
2. The sources of the
ethical teachings and central beliefs of Judaism (the Hebrew Bible, the
Commentaries): belief in God,
observance of law, practice of concepts if righteousness and justice, and
importance of study; how the ideas of the Hebrew traditions are reflected in
the moral and ethical traditions of Western civilization
3. How Abraham, Moses,
Ruth, Naomi, David, and Johanan ben
Zaccai influenced the development of the Jewish
religion. Discuss Biblical stories of the above.
4 The location of
the settlements and movements of Hebrew peoples, including the Exodus, the
movement to and from Egypt,
and the significance of the Exodus experience to the Jewish people and the other
people in history.
5. How the practice of the
Jewish religion was modified after the destruction of the second Temple in 70 A.D., and the dispersion of the Jewish
population from Jerusalem and the land of Israel
6.4 Students analyze the geographic, political,
economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilization of Ancient
Greece,
in terms of:
1. The connections between
geography and the development of city states in the region of the Aegean Sea, including patterns of trade and commerce among
Greek city-states and within the wider Mediterranean region
2. The transition from
tyranny and oligarchy to democratic forms of government and back to dictatorship
in ancient Greece,
and the significance of the invention of the idea of citizenship
3. The key differences
between Athenian or
direct democracy and representative democracy (e.g., draw from Pericles’ Funeral Oration)
4. The significance of
Greek mythology to the everyday life of people in the region and how Greek
mythology and epics such as the Iliad and the Odyssey and from Aesop’s
Fables
5. The founding,
expansion, and political organization of the Persian
Empire
6. Similarities and
differences between life in Athens and Sparta, with emphasis on
their roles in the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars
7. The rise of Alexander
the Great in the North and the spread of Greek culture eastward
8. The enduring
contributions of important Greek figures in the arts and sciences (e.g.,
biographies of Sappho, Hypatia,
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Thucydides)
6.5 Students analyze the geographic, political,
economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of India,
in terms of:
1. The location and
description of the river system and physical setting that supported the rise of
this civilization
2. The significance of the
Aryan invasions
3. The major belief and
practices of Brahmanism in India
and how they evolved into early Hinduism
4. The social structure of
the caste system
5. The life and moral
teachings of Buddha and how Buddhism spread is India,
Ceylon, and Central Asia
6. The growth of the Maurya empire and the political
and moral achievements of the emperor Asoka
7. Important aesthetic and
intellectual traditions (e.g., Sanskrit literature, medicine, metallurgy,
mathematics including Hindu-Arabic numerals and the zero)
6.6 Students
analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures
of the early civilizations of China,
in terms of:
1. The location and
description of the origins of Chinese civilization in the Huang-He Valley Shang dynasty
2. The geographical
features of China
that made governance and movement of ideas and goods difficult and served to
isolate that country from the rest of the world
3. The life is Confucius
and the fundamental teachings of Confucianism and Taoism
4. The political and
cultural problems prevalent in the time of Confucius and how he sought to solve
them
5. The policies and
achievements of the emperor Shi Huangdi in unifying
northern China
under the Qin dynasty
6. The political
contributions of the Han dynasty to the development of the imperial
bureaucratic state and the expansion of the empire
7. The significance of the
trans-Eurasian “silk roads” in the period of the Han and Roman
empires and their locations
8. The diffusion of
Buddhism northward to China
during the Han dynasty
6.7 Students analyze the geographic, political,
economic, religious, and social structures in the development of Rome, in terms of:
1. The location and rise
of the Roman Republic, including such important mythical and historical figures
as Aeneas, Romulus, and Remus, Cincinnatus,
Julius Caesar, and Cicero
2. The character of the
government of the Roman
Republic and its
significance (e.g., written constitution and tripartite government, checks and
balances, civic duty)
3. The location of and the
political and geographic reasons for the growth of Roman territories and
expansion of the empire, including how the Roman empire fostered economic growth
through the use of currency and trade routes
4. The influence of Julius
Caesar and Augustus in Rome’s
transition from republic to empire
5. The migration of Jews
around the Mediterranean region and the effects of their conflict with the
Romans, including the Romans’ restrictions on their right to live in Jerusalem
6. The origins of
Christianity in the Jewish Messianic prophecies, the life and teachings of
Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New Testament, and the contribution of
St. Paul the Apostle and later St. Augustine to the definition and spread of
Christian beliefs (e.g., belief in the Trinity, resurrection, salvation)
7. The circumstances that
led to the spread of Christianity in Europe
and other Roman territories
8. The legacies of Roman
art and architecture, technology and science, literature, language, and law
9. Share examples of
religious art.
History
Tracking Sheet – Sixth Grade
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