Big Ideas
Big Ideas
Contacts and conflicts between peoples stimulated significant cultural, social, political change.
Human and environmental factors shape changes in population and living standards.
Exploration, expansion, and colonization had varying consequences for different groups.
Changing ideas about the world created tension between people wanting to adopt new ideas and those wanting to preserve established traditions.
Content
Learning Standards
Content
social, political, and economic systems and structures, including those of at least one indigenous civilization
- Sample topics:
- feudal societal structures and rights (e.g., in Europe versus Japan)
- Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe
- diffusion of religions throughout the world
- collapse of empires
- labour management
- gender relations
- Key questions:
- What was the status of women in various societies during this period of history?
- How were political decisions made during this period of history?
- How was wealth distributed in societies during this period?
scientific and technological innovations
- Sample topics:
- Arab world, Ibn Battuta, Islamic Golden Age (e.g., the diffusion of arts and mathematics)
- Zheng He and cartography
- European (Portuguese, Spanish, British) navigation tools and locations
- cartography and navigation
- agriculture
- Key questions:
- How did technology benefit people during this period of history?
- Where did key scientific and technological discoveries occur?
philosophical and cultural shifts
- Sample topics:
- printing press
- Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe
- Enlightenment
- literary and artistic shifts
interactions and exchanges of resources, ideas, arts, and culture between and among different civilizations
- Sample topics:
- Silk Road, Indian Ocean Trade (e.g., the flourishing of arts, architecture, math, and Islam)
- Crusades
- cultural diffusion
- linguistic changes
- environmental effects
- Columbian Exchange
- imperialism
- Renaissance
- Mesoamerica
exploration, expansion, and colonization
- Sample topics:
- contact and conflict
- the Americas
- state formation and collapse
changes in population and living standards
- Sample topics:
- forced and unforced migration and movement of people
- diseases and health
- urbanization and the effect of expanding communities
- environmental impact (e.g., resource and land use)
Curricular Competency
Learning Standards
Curricular Competency
Use Social Studies inquiry processes and skills to ask questions; gather, interpret, and analyze ideas; and communicate findings and decisions
- Key skills:
- Select a relevant problem or issue for inquiry.
- Use comparison, classification, inference, imagination, verification, and analogy to clarify and define a problem or issue.
- Compare the advantages and disadvantages of various graphic forms of communication (e.g., graphs, tables, charts, maps, photographs, sketches).
- Demonstrate an ability to interpret scales and legends in graphs, tables, and maps (e.g., climograph, topographical map, pie chart).
- Compare maps of early civilizations with modern maps of the same area.
- Select an appropriate graphic form of communication for a specific purpose (e.g., a timeline to show a sequence of events, a map to show location).
- Represent information fairly and cite sources consistently.
- Select appropriate forms of presentation suitable for the purpose and audience (e.g., multimedia, oral presentation, song, dramatic performance, written presentation).
- Demonstrate debating skills, including identifying, discussing, defining, and clarifying a problem, issue, or inquiry.
Assess the significance of people, places, events, or developments at particular times and places (significance)
- Key questions:
- Which explorer had the greatest impact on the colonization of North America?
- Should the printing press be considered a more important turning point in human history than the Internet? Explain why or why not.
Identify what the creators of accounts, narratives, maps, or texts have determined is significant (significance)
- Sample activity:
- Create a timeline of key events during this period and rank which are the most significant.
- Key question:
- Which had more impact on the world: Indian Ocean trade or the Italian Renaissance?
Assess the credibility of multiple sources and the adequacy of evidence used to justify conclusions (evidence)
- Sample activities:
- Distinguish between primary and secondary sources.
- Assess the accuracy of sources (e.g., consider when they were created, recognize ambiguity and vagueness, distinguish conclusions from supporting statements, analyze logic or consistency of conclusions in terms of evidence provided).
- Identify biases that influence documents (e.g., articulate different points of view, such as a landholder’s or tenant’s, on topics or issues; identify authors’ motives and describe how that could affect their reliability as a source; determine whether sources reflect single or multiple points of view).
- Locate and use relevant data.
- Evaluate the value of literature from this period (e.g., Canterbury Tales, The Tale of Genji) as a historical record.
- Key questions:
- How did the changing understanding of geography and astronomy affect how people perceived the world and their place in it?
- What do different systems of mapping and cartography indicate about the cultures from which they emerged?
- Which sources of information from this period are the most reliable?
Characterize different time periods in history, including periods of progress and decline, and identify key turning points that mark periods of change (continuity and change)
- Key questions:
- In what ways did the Industrial Revolution transform societies?
- Did the First Industrial Revolution in Britain result in an improvement in living standards for most people?
- Which development produced greater change: the Second Industrial Revolution or the First Industrial Revolution?
- How do the increasingly global networks of this period compare to present-day global networks?
Determine which causes most influenced particular decisions, actions, or events, and assess their short-and long-term consequences (cause and consequence)
- Sample activity:
- Analyze whether an event was caused by underlying systemic factors (e.g., social unrest, economic decline) or by an unpredictable event (e.g., disease, natural disaster).
- Key questions:
- How did the Black Death cause the end of feudalism and the Middle Ages in Europe?
- What would have been the impacts if the indigenous peoples of the Americas had been immune to smallpox and other diseases?
- What kinds of negative consequences can result from a positive event, and what kinds of positive consequences can result from a negative event (e.g., the role of the Black Death in breaking down the feudal system; ethnic violence resulting from colonial independence)?
Explain different perspectives on past or present people, places, issues, or events, and compare the values, worldviews, and beliefs of human cultures and societies in different times and places (perspective)
- Sample activities:
- Gather and evaluate sources that provide information about perspectives on past or present people, places, issues, or events during a particular period of history.
- Compare the level of respect for the natural environment in different societies.
- Compare the factors that influenced the spread of two different global religions
- Key questions:
- How did religious institutions respond to scientific, technological, philosophical, and cultural shifts?
- Who had more influence and power in Europe during the Middle Ages: the state (i.e., monarchs) or the church?
- Was religion the primary cause of the Crusades and religious wars?
Make ethical judgments about past events, decisions, or actions, and assess the limitations of drawing direct lessons from the past (ethical judgment)
- Key questions:
- How are different groups represented in various cultural narratives?
- What lessons can we learn from the loss of languages due to imperialism?