Grade 5 Social Studies

Unit Sketch

This cross-disciplinary mini-unit launches the year with a short focus on the ACS Core Values and Approaches to Learning while building classroom community, routines and rules/expectations. All grades will be exploring these ACS foundational documents as well as the essential Responsive Classroom practices of Morning Meeting, Energizers, Closing Circle, Hopes & Dreams, and Teaching Discipline.

Unit Sketch

We are Social Scientists is not a stand alone unit, but the lenses will become tools to use in the Global Interactions and Environmental Stewardship, Human Movement: Migration, Immigration and Expats, and the Slavery Then and Now units. All Social Studies units will incorporate the social scientist lenses: What tools would a geographer use to look at this issue? How would an economist look at this issue? What would interest a political scientist about this event or issue? What connections would a historian make?

Unit Sketch

This 4-week geographical, cultural and economics inquiry explores the intersecting concepts of population, migration, and expatriate life.

The inquiry begins with an exploration of World Population Density maps as a way to integrate map analysis skills and historical thinking into the study of population change. While there are many reasons for population change, the inquiry looks at changing population as a result of human migration.

After students determine what human migration is and the various types of voluntary and involuntary migration, they address the supporting question "Why have humans migrated in the past and why do they migrate now?" An historical study of migration events leads to the use of UAE as a case study, and students discover multiple reasons for the sharp population increase and influx of people to the UAE and determine the costs & benefits to individuals, communities, and culture.

Before constructing their evidence-based arguments, students consider the cause and effect of human migration on themselves. Reflections related to the pros and cons of human migration on their lives is an important part of the inquiry.

The inquiry concludes with evidence-based arguments that address the compelling question, "Should people move around the world?" and peer critiques. An engaging extension might be one in which students compile a collection of oral histories from ACS students, families, staff and faculty about their own experiences with human migration.

Unit Sketch

This unit is a companion unit to the Reading/Writing unit: Advocacy: Modern Day Slavery. This inquiry needs to be launched at least a couple of weeks before that unit can begin though, so that students can have some background knowledge about the Atlantic Slave Trade. In addition, the social scientist lenses from the unit We are Social Scientists will be incorporated into this unit, looking at the Atlantic Slave trade through the lenses of a geographer, economist, historian and political scientist.

This unit begins with a look at the Atlantic Slave Trade to give students some background knowledge they might not have about slavery in the western hemisphere, using the textbooks, History Alive. This inquiry then provides students with an opportunity to evaluate the relationship between the dramatic increase in European sugar consumption in the 18th and 19th centuries and the reliance on the labor of enslaved persons to produce sugar in the Western Hemisphere. In examining the compelling question-“How did sugar feed slavery?” - students explore the environmental, economic, and social consequences of increased sugar production. Students work with featured sources focused on sugar production and the treatment of enslaved workers on sugar plantations. The goal of this inquiry is to provide students with an opportunity to examine the human costs of consumer behaviors through the historical example of sugar production in the Western Hemisphere. Such knowledge may help students as they make economic decisions of their own.

Unit Sketch

This unit focuses on the Water Crisis which is linked to the Science unit, Watery Planet and the read aloud, "A long walk to water" by Linda Sue Park. In this unit students learn about he water crisis primarily through the Science unit, Watery Planet, using mysteryscience.com