 This
section contains social studies topics which a child 11 years of age might learn
while attending grade 5 at elementary school in the United States. Curriculum is
based on state and national content standards. |
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United States History and Geography: Making a New Nation
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Students in grade five study the development of the nation
up to 1850, with an emphasis on the people who were already
here, when and from where others arrived, and why they came.
Students learn about the colonial government founded on
Judeo-Christian principles, the ideals of the Enlightenment,
and the English traditions of self-government. They
recognize that ours is a nation that has a constitution that
derives its power from the people, that has gone through a
revolution, that once sanctioned slavery, that experienced
conflict over land with the original inhabitants, and that
experienced a westward movement that took its people across
the continent. Studying the cause, course, and consequences
of the early explorations through the War for Independence
and western expansion is central to students' fundamental
understanding of how the principles of the American republic
form the basis of a pluralistic society in which individual
rights are secured. |
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Curriculum -
Grade 5 Social Studies |
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Geography
- Students describe the major
pre-Columbian settlements, including the cliff dwellers
and pueblo people of the desert Southwest, the American
Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the nomadic nations of
the Great Plains, and the woodland peoples east of the
Mississippi River.
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- Describe how geography and climate
influenced the way various nations lived and adjusted to
the natural environment, including locations of
villages, the distinct structures that they built, and
how they obtained food, clothing, tools, and utensils.
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- Describe their varied customs and
folklore traditions.
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- Explain their varied economies and
systems of government.
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- Name the states and territories that
existed in the year of statehood of their state and identify their locations and major
geographical features (e.g., mountain ranges, principal
rivers, dominant plant regions).
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- Students know the location of the
current 50 states and the names of their capitals.
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History
- Students trace the routes of early
explorers and describe the early explorations of the
Americas.
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- Describe the entrepreneurial
characteristics of early explorers (e.g., Christopher
Columbus, Francisco Vásquez de
Coronado) and the technological developments that made sea
exploration by latitude and longitude possible (e.g.,
compass, sextant, astrolabe, seaworthy ships, chronometers,
gunpowder).
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- Explain the aims, obstacles, and
accomplishments of the explorers, sponsors, and leaders
of key European expeditions and the reasons Europeans
chose to explore and colonize the world (e.g., the
Spanish Reconquista, the Protestant
Reformation, the Counter Reformation).
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- Trace the routes of the major land
explorers of the United States, the distances traveled
by explorers, and the Atlantic trade routes that linked
Africa, the West Indies, the British colonies, and
Europe.
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- Locate on maps of North and South
America land claimed by Spain, France, England,
Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Russia.
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- Students describe the cooperation
and conflict that existed among the American Indians and
between the Indian nations and the new settlers.
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- Describe the competition among the
English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Indian nations for
control of North America.
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- Describe the cooperation that
existed between the colonists and Indians during the
1600s and 1700s (e.g., in agriculture, the fur trade,
military alliances, treaties, cultural interchanges).
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- Examine the conflicts before the
Revolutionary War (e.g., the Pequot and King Philip's
Wars in New England, the Powhatan Wars in Virginia, the
French and Indian War).
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- Discuss the role of broken treaties
and massacres and the factors that led to the Indians
defeat, including the resistance of Indian nations to
encroachments and assimilation (e.g., the story of the
Trail of Tears).
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- Describe the internecine Indian
conflicts, including the competing claims for control of
lands (e.g., actions of the Iroquois, Huron, Lakota
[Sioux]).
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- Explain the influence and
achievements of significant leaders of the time (e.g.,
John Marshall, Andrew Jackson, Chief Tecumseh, Chief
Logan, Chief John Ross, Sequoyah).
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- Students understand the political,
religious, social, and economic institutions that
evolved in the colonial era.
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- Understand the influence of location
and physical setting on the founding of the original 13
colonies, and identify on a map the locations of the
colonies and of the American Indian nations already
inhabiting these areas.
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- Identify the major individuals and
groups responsible for the founding of the various
colonies and the reasons for their founding (e.g., John
Smith, Virginia; Roger Williams, Rhode Island; William
Penn, Pennsylvania; Lord Baltimore, Maryland; William
Bradford, Plymouth; John Winthrop, Massachusetts).
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- Describe the religious aspects of
the earliest colonies (e.g., Puritanism in
Massachusetts, Anglicanism in Virginia, Catholicism in
Maryland, Quakerism in Pennsylvania).
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- Identify the significance and
leaders of the First Great Awakening, which marked a
shift in religious ideas, practices, and allegiances in
the colonial period, the growth of religious toleration,
and free exercise of religion.
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- Describe the introduction of slavery
into America, the responses of slave families to their
condition, the ongoing struggle between proponents and
opponents of slavery, and the gradual
institutionalization of slavery in the South.
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- Students explain the causes of the
American Revolution.
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- Describe the views, lives, and
impact of key individuals during this period (e.g., King
George III, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George
Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams).
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- Understand how political, religious,
and economic ideas and interests brought about the
Revolution (e.g., resistance to imperial policy, the
Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, taxes on tea, Coercive
Acts).
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- Students understand the course and
consequences of the American Revolution.
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- Understand the personal impact and
economic hardship of the war on families, problems of
financing the war, wartime inflation, and laws against
hoarding goods and materials and profiteering.
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- Identify and map the major military
battles, campaigns, and turning points of the
Revolutionary War, the roles of the American and British
leaders, and the Indian leaders' alliances on both
sides.
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- Describe the contributions of France
and other nations and of individuals to the outcome of
the Revolution (e.g., Benjamin Franklin's negotiations
with the French, the French navy, the Treaty of Paris,
The Netherlands, Russia, the Marquis Marie Joseph de
Lafayette, Tadeusz Ko´sciuszko,
Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben).
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- Identify the different roles women
played during the Revolution (e.g., Abigail Adams,
Martha Washington, Molly Pitcher, Phillis Wheatley, Mercy Otis Warren).
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- Demonstrate knowledge of the
significance of land policies developed under the
Continental Congress (e.g., sale of western lands, the
Northwest Ordinance of 1787) and those policies' impact
on American Indians' land.
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- Students trace the colonization,
immigration, and settlement patterns of the American
people from 1789 to the mid-1800s, with emphasis on the
role of economic incentives, effects of the physical and
political geography, and transportation systems.
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- Understand how the ideals set forth
in the Declaration of Independence changed the way
people viewed slavery.
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- Discuss the waves of immigrants from
Europe between 1789 and 1850 and their modes of
transportation into the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys and
through the Cumberland Gap (e.g., overland wagons,
canals, flatboats, steamboats).
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- Demonstrate knowledge of the
explorations of the trans-Mississippi West following the
Louisiana Purchase (e.g., Meriwether Lewis and William
Clark, Zebulon Pike, John Fremont).
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- Discuss the experiences of settlers
on the overland trails to the West (e.g., location of
the routes; purpose of the journeys; the influence of
the terrain, rivers, vegetation, and climate; life in
the territories at the end of these trails).
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- Describe the continued migration of
settlers into their state.
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- Relate how and when regional lands became part of
the United States, including the significance of
important events.
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Government
- Understand how the British colonial
period created the basis for the development of
political self-government and a free-market economic
system and the differences between the British, Spanish,
and French colonial systems.
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- Explain the early democratic ideas
and practices that emerged during the colonial period,
including the significance of representative assemblies
and town meetings.
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- Understand the people and events
associated with the drafting and signing of the
Declaration of Independence and the document's
significance, including the key political concepts it
embodies, the origins of those concepts, and its role in
severing ties with Great Britain.
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- Explain how state constitutions that
were established after 1776 embodied the ideals of the
American Revolution and helped serve as models for the
U.S. Constitution.
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- Students describe the people and
events associated with the development of the U.S.
Constitution and analyze the Constitution's significance
as the foundation of the American republic.
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- Know the significance of the first
and second Continental Congresses and of the Committees
of Correspondence.
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- List the shortcomings of the
Articles of Confederation as set forth by their critics.
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- Explain the significance of the new
Constitution of 1787, including the struggles over its
ratification and the reasons for the addition of the
Bill of Rights.
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- Understand the fundamental
principles of American constitutional democracy,
including how the government derives its power from the
people and the primacy of individual liberty.
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- Understand how the Constitution is
designed to secure our liberty by both empowering and
limiting central government and compare the powers
granted to citizens, Congress, the president, and the
Supreme Court with those reserved to the states.
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- Discuss the meaning of the American
creed that calls on citizens to safeguard the liberty of
individual Americans within a unified nation, to respect
the rule of law, and to preserve the Constitution.
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- Know the songs that express American
ideals (e.g., "America the Beautiful," "The Star
Spangled Banner").
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