Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks
Standards for History and Social Science Practice – Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12
1 Demonstrate civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions.
Civic knowledge includes the core knowledge in the Content Standards relating to civics and government, economics, geography, and history.
Civic intellectual skills encompass knowing how to identify, assess, interpret, describe, analyze and explain matters of concern in civic life.
Civic participatory skills encompass knowing how to make and support arguments, use the political process to communicate with elected officials and representatives of government, and plan strategically for civic change.
Literacy Standards for History and Social Science
Grades 3-5 Reading Standards for Literacy in the Content Areas: History/Social Science
Key Ideas and Details
1 Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences (See grades 3-5 Writing Standard 8 for more on paraphrasing.)
2 Determine the main ideas of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize a text.
3 Explain events, ideas, and concepts in a civics, geography, economics, or history text, based on specific information in the text.
Craft and Structure
4 Determine the meaning of general academic vocabulary and words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
10 Independently and proficiently read and comprehend history/social studies texts exhibiting complexity appropriate for the grades 3-5.
Grade 5 – United States History to the Civil War and the Modern Civil Rights Movement
Topic 2. Reasons for revolution, the Revolutionary War, and the formation of government – Supporting Questions: Why did most Native Peoples side with the French against the British in the French and Indian Wars? Were the colonists justified in rebelling against Great Britain in the American Revolution?
8 Explain the reasons for the French and Indian War and how its costs led to an overhaul of British imperial policy; explain key British policies and the colonial response to them:
a. policies: the Proclamation of 1763, the Sugar Act (1764), the Stamp Act (1765), the Townsend Duties (1767), the Tea Act (1773), the Intolerable Acts (1774)
Topic 3. Principles of United States Government – Supporting Question: How did the Constitution attempt to balance competing interests, the question of power, and ideas about slavery?
19 Describe the responsibilities of government at the federal, state, and local levels (e.g., protection of individual rights and the provision of services such as law enforcement and the building and funding of schools).
Topic 4. The growth of the Republic – Supporting Question: How did events of the early Republic test the newly-founded United States?
22 Read the Bill of Rights and explain the freedoms it guarantees; research the historical background of one of the first ten Amendments and make an argument using evidence for its inclusion in the Bill of Rights in 1791.
Topic 5. Slavery, the legacy of the Civil War, and the struggle for civil rights for all – Supporting Question: What ideas and events of the 19th century led to the expansion of civil rights in the 20th and 21st centuries?
29 Identify the major reasons for the Civil War (e.g., slavery, political and economic competition in Western territories, the emergence of the Republican Party) and the war’s most important outcomes (e.g., end of slavery, Reconstruction, expanded role of the federal government, industrial growth in the North).