4th grade Social Studies
9 units matched to the Arizona Academic Standards. Kids see this subject as “Our World”.
Focus areas
- Civilizations of the Americas
- Exploration, encounters and the Columbian Exchange
- The colonies and their economies
Units
Unit 1
Geography of the Americas
The landforms, bodies of water, climate zones and resources of the Western Hemisphere (the Andes, Rockies, Amazon, Great Lakes and Panama Canal), kinds of maps, and how the land shapes where people live and work.
Learning standard: 4.G1.1 · maps of the Americas and their physical features
Unit 2
Civilizations of the Americas
What makes a civilization (cities, government, job specialization, writing, social classes), city-states and empires, and how the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Inca, Mississippian and Ancestral Puebloan peoples farmed, built and adapted to their land. Maya, Nahua and Quechua peoples live in these lands today.
Learning standard: 4.H1.1; 4.G2.1 · early civilizations of the Americas and how they adapted to their environments
Unit 3
Maya, Aztec & Inca
How the Maya, Aztec (Mexica) and Inca arose, their cities, farming, achievements in mathematics and astronomy, and how the Aztec and Inca empires were defeated by Spain. Maya, Nahua and Quechua peoples are living communities today.
Learning standard: 4.H1.1; 4.H3.1 · the Maya, Aztec and Inca, their cities, governments and ideas
Unit 4
The Columbian Exchange
The plants, animals, people, ideas and diseases that crossed the Atlantic after 1492, sugar plantations, and the transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage, told factually, with how enslaved Africans resisted and kept their cultures alive.
Learning standard: 4.G3.1; 4.G4.1 · the Columbian Exchange and its effects on the people of the Americas, Europe and Africa
Unit 5
Exploration & Exchange
The great voyages, the ships and tools that made them possible, mapmaking, the Columbian Exchange and the rise of colonial empires and mercantilism.
Learning standard: 4.H2.1; 4.SP4.1 · why Europeans explored, and the causes and effects of their empires in the Americas
Unit 6
The Thirteen Colonies
Why the colonies were founded, how the three regions differed in land, climate and work, and early self-government such as the Mayflower Compact and the House of Burgesses.
Learning standard: 4.H3.1; 4.G2.1 · the English colonies, their regions and how ideas and the land shaped them
Unit 7
Colonial Trade & Work
Resources, specialization and trade in the colonies, mercantilism, and the Atlantic slave trade and its impact on African peoples, told plainly and age-appropriately.
Learning standard: 4.E3.1; 4.E2.1 · industries, work and trade in the colonies, and scarcity and choice
Unit 8
History Detective
Primary and secondary sources, timelines and centuries, fact and opinion, claims and evidence, and judging a source by its maker, date and purpose, using early American history.
Learning standard: 4.SP3.4; 4.SP3.2 · judging a source by its author, date and purpose, and comparing sources
Unit 9
The Americas Through Time
Ordering events in the history of the Western Hemisphere, from the founding of Tenochtitlan and Columbus's voyages to independence movements, the Panama Canal and trade agreements.
Learning standard: 4.SP1.1 · putting events in the Americas in order
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