Montana Content Standards 3rd Grade Social Studies Activities

MT.1. Students access, synthesize, and evaluate information to communicate and apply social studies knowledge to real world situations.

1.1. Students will identify and practice the steps of an inquiry process (i.e., identify question or problem, locate and evaluate potential resources, gather and synthesize information, create a new product, and evaluate product and process).

1.2. Students will evaluate information quality (e.g., accuracy, relevance, fact or fiction).

MT.2. Students analyze how people create and change structures of power, authority, and governance to understand the operation of government and to demonstrate civic responsibility.

2.1. Students will explain the purpose and various levels of government.

2.2. Students will recognize local, state, tribal and federal governments and identify representative leaders at these levels (e.g., mayor, governor, chairperson, president).

2.3. Students will identify the major responsibilities of local, state, tribal and federal government.

2.4. Students will explain how governments provide for needs and wants of people by establishing order and security and managing conflict.

2.5. Students will identify and explain the individual's responsibilities to family, peers and the community, including the need for civility, respect for diversity and the rights of others.

2.7. Students will explore the role of technology in communications, transportation, information processing or other areas as it contributes to or helps resolve problems.

MT.3. Students apply geographic knowledge and skills (e.g., location, place, human/environment interactions, movement, and regions).

3.1. Students will identify and use various representations of the Earth (e.g., maps, globes, photographs, latitude and longitude, scale).

3.2. Students will locate on a map or globe physical features (e.g., continents, oceans, mountain ranges, landforms) natural features (e.g., flora, fauna) and human features (e.g., cities, states, national borders).

3.3. Students will describe and illustrate ways in which people interact with their physical environment (e.g., land use, location of communities, methods of construction, design of shelters).

3.4. Students will describe how human movement and settlement patterns reflect the wants and needs of diverse cultures.

3.5. Students will use appropriate geographic resources (e.g., atlases, databases, charts, grid systems, technology, graphs, maps) to gather information about local communities, reservations, Montana, the United States, and the world.

3.6. Students will identify and distinguish between physical system changes (e.g., seasons, climate, weather, water cycle, natural disasters) and describe the social and economic effects of these changes.

3.7. Students will describe and compare the ways in which people in different regions of the world interact with their physical environments.

MT.4. Students demonstrate an understanding of the effects of time, continuity, and change on historical and future perspectives and relationships.

4.2. Students will use a timeline to select, organize, and sequence information describing eras in history.

4.3. Students will examine biographies, stories, narratives, and folk tales to understand the lives of ordinary people and extraordinary people, place them in time and context, and explain their relationship to important historical events.

4.4. Students will identify and describe famous people, important democratic values (e.g., democracy, freedom, justice) symbols (e.g., Montana and U.S. flags, state flower) and holidays, in the history of Montana, American Indian tribes, and the United States.

4.5. Students will identify and illustrate how technologies have impacted the course of history (e.g., energy, transportation, communications).

4.6. Students will recognize that people view and report historical events differently.

4.7. Students will explain the history, culture, and current status of the American Indian tribes in Montana and the United States.

MT.5. Students make informed decisions based on an understanding of the economic principles of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption.

5.1. Students will give examples of needs and wants; scarcity and choice (e.g., budgeting of allowance, trading cards).

5.2. Students will identify basic economic concepts (e.g., supply and demand, price) that explain events and issues in the community.

5.3. Students will distinguish between private goods and services (e.g., family car or local restaurant) and public goods and services (e.g., interstate highway system or U.S. Postal Service).

5.4. Students will describe how personal economic decisions, (e.g., deciding what to buy, what to recycle, how much to contribute to people in need) affect the lives of people in Montana, United States, and the world.

5.5. Students will explain the roles of money, banking, and savings in everyday life.

MT.6. Students demonstrate an understanding of the impact of human interaction and cultural diversity on societies.

6.2. Students will describe ways in which expressions of culture influence people (e.g., language, spirituality, stories, folktales, music, art, dance).

6.3. Students will identify and describe ways families, groups, tribes and communities influence the individual's daily life and personal choices.

6.5. Students will identify examples of individual struggles and their influence and contributions (e.g., Sitting Bull, Louis Riel, Chief Plenty Coups, Evelyn Cameron, Helen Keller, Mohandas Gandhi, Rosa Parks).