CATALINA FOOTHILLS SCHOOL DISTRICT

Social Studies

The Catalina Foothills School District (CFSD) social studies standards are aligned to the Arizona History and Social Science Standards. The standards are organized into five social studies content areas. Within these content areas are four to five major core concepts referred to as Anchor Standards. Grade level standards support these Anchor Standards. There are twenty-one Anchor Standards. Seventeen of these Anchor Standards center around the content areas of civics, economics, geography, and history. The remaining four standards focus on the disciplinary skills and processes that all students need to know and apply to any historical era, context, or content area. Using these tools, students think like historians, geographers, political scientists, and economists. These skills and processes are especially critical in a time when students are exposed to massive amounts of information in numerous forms and must develop the skills to make sense of it.

Children and adolescents are naturally curious and have unlimited questions. Learning to investigate questions in the social studies discipline areas results in a deeper understanding of content and a stronger connection to the material. Students gather and evaluate evidence, formulate arguments, critique counter claims, and communicate their conclusions through many modes including writing, speaking, and visual representations.

Introduction to Social Studies