Sixth Grade Social Studies Content Standards

Students develop an understanding of society and the ability to describe the past through the eyes and experiences of those who were there.

Students develop an understanding of the history of the world’s many cultures.

Students see the connection between ideas and behavior, between the values and ideals that people hold and the ethical consequences of those beliefs in order to foster the kind of mutual respect, patience, and civic courage required in our increasingly independent world.

Students differentiate past, present and future time. They seek and evaluate evidence, use resources to distinguish bias in text, compare and contrast historical information, interpret the historical record and construct their own historical narratives.

Sixth grade students are expected to know:

• Early human development and evolution
  • The early physical and cultural development of mankind from the Paleolithic Era to the Neolithic Era. Topics covered may include:
    • Hunter gatherer societies
    • The cradles of civilizations
    • The climatic changes and evolutionary changes that gave rise to the agricultural revolution
• The cultural model and ancient civilizations
  • The components of the Cultural Model (economics, politics, religion, social relationships and aesthetics). Students will apply the model to the following civilizations:
    • Mesopotamia
    • Ancient Egypt
    • Ancient Greece
    • Ancient Rome
• The significance of geography
  • The development of Ancient Civilizations
    • The location and description of river systems and valleys
    • The location of major trade routes
    • The geography of the Aegean and its trade routes
    • The location and rise of the Roman Republic
    • The geographic reasons for the growth of the Roman Empire
• Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt
  • The development of agricultural techniques and the emergence of cities
  • The importance of religion in the social structure
  • Egyptian art and architecture
  • The evolution of language and its written forms
  • Role of Egyptian trade
  • Important leaders such as Hatshepsut and Ramses the Great
  • Rule of Law such as Hammurabi’s Code
  • Significance of the development to monotheism
• Ancient Greece
  • The development of city-states
  • Introduce the ideas of tyranny and oligarchy and the development of democracy
  • The significance of Greek mythology
  • Similarities and difference between life in Athens and Sparta
  • Alexander the Great and the spread of Greek influence
  • Important Greek figures such as Hypatia, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid or Thucydides
  • Key differences between representative democracy and direct democracy
• Ancient Rome
  • The government of the Roman Republic
  • Growth of Roman territories and expansion of the Empire
  • The influence of Caesar and Augustus
  • The legacies of Roman art and architecture, technology and science, literature, language and law

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