Category: Grade 3 Social Studies

Students learn about communities around the globe and about global citizenship. Students bring with them knowledge about their communities. In this course, students make comparisons across time and space, examining different communities and their cultures. Culture includes social organization, customs and traditions, language, arts and literature, religion, forms of government, and economic systems. Students are introduced to the concepts of prejudice, discrimination and human rights, as well as to social action.

Students will develop a beginning understanding that geographic regions have unifying characteristics and can be studied using a variety of tools. They will learn to recognize and identify that the location of world communities can be described using geographic tools and vocabulary. The students will examine how geographic factors influence where people settle and form communities and learn to identify and explain how people adapt to and modify their environment in different ways to meet their needs.

Students will learn about how each community or culture has a unique history, including heroic figures, traditions, and holidays. Students will be exposed to legends, folktales, oral histories, biographies, and historical narratives and investigate how communities use these to transmit cultural histories from one generation to the next. In addition, students will also explore arts, music, dance, and literature of select world communities.

In this unit students will explore how communities share cultural similarities and differences across the world. Students will investigate the structure and activities of families and schools and share similarities and differences across world communities. In addition, students will learn about cultural diffusion and the process by which cultures exchange and transmit ideas, beliefs, technologies, and goods over time.

In this unit, students will examine how communities meet their needs and wants in a variety of ways, forming the basis for their economy. Students will explore how world communities use human and natural resources in different ways and that people in communities have various ways of meeting their basic needs and earning a living. In addition, students will learn about how each community develops an economic system that addresses three essential questions. Through this study, students will learn about communities and the goods and services they provide as well as trade to meet the needs and wants of the community.