6th grade Social Studies
8 units matched to the Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards.
Focus areas
- Theme: Minnesota Studies
- Minnesota's land, water and regions
- The Dakota and Anishinaabe and Tribal sovereignty
- Territory, statehood and the US–Dakota War of 1862
- Work, immigration and change, and Minnesota's government
Units
Unit 1
Sources & Evidence
Children practice choosing and judging sources, reading artifacts and art, comparing accounts and drawing conclusions from evidence.
Benchmark: 6.3.13.2; 6.4.20.1 · using sources and evidence to support a claim
Unit 2
Minnesota's Land & Water
Minnesota's regions and features: its lakes, the Mississippi headwaters at Lake Itasca, Lake Superior, the prairie, deciduous and coniferous forests, the Iron Range and the neighbors on its borders, and how they shape where people live and work.
Benchmark: 6.3.14.1; 6.3.15.1; 6.5.24.1 · Minnesota's places and regions, how physical features and resources affect settlement, and how people have shaped the landscape
Unit 3
Dakota & Anishinaabe Nations
The Dakota and Anishinaabe as living nations: Minnesota's 11 Tribal Nations, what sovereignty means, how treaty rights to hunt, fish and gather are exercised today, wild rice, and how languages are being taught again. Told in the present tense, with nothing sacred or ceremonial.
Benchmark: 6.1.6.1; 6.4.18.1; 6.1.2.1 · sovereignty and treaty rights today, how Dakota and Anishinaabe people tell their own history, and Tribal governments
Unit 4
Fur Trade & Treaties
The fur trade and how Indigenous people, traders and the US Army interacted, Fort Snelling and the enslaved people held there, and the treaties of 1837 and 1851, including the unequal power behind them and the payments that were often late.
Benchmark: 6.4.18.2; 6.4.19.1; 6.4.19.2 · interactions of Indigenous people, traders and settlers, different ways of understanding the land, and the unequal power in treaty-making
Unit 5
Statehood & 1862
How Minnesota became a territory (1849) and a state (1858), Minnesota in the Civil War, and the US–Dakota War of 1862: its causes, the execution of 38 Dakota men in Mankato and the forced removal of Dakota people, seen through more than one perspective.
Benchmark: 6.4.20.1; 6.4.19.3; 6.4.22.1; 6.4.18.3 · how Minnesota became a territory and a state, conflicting accounts of the US–Dakota War of 1862, and Minnesota in the Civil War
Unit 6
Work & New Minnesotans
How logging, flour milling, iron mining and farming used Minnesota's resources, and why people have come to Minnesota, from German and Scandinavian immigrants in the 1800s to Hmong and Somali refugees more recently.
Benchmark: 6.4.21.1; 6.4.22.2; 6.4.21.2; 6.2.11.1 · how industry and farming used natural resources, migration to Minnesota, and how goods and money move through markets
Unit 7
Governing Minnesota
The purpose of the Constitution of the State of Minnesota, the Governor, the Legislature and the courts, counties and cities, how people become citizens and vote, and Minnesota's state symbols.
Benchmark: 6.1.4.1; 6.1.2.1; 6.1.3.1 · the purpose of the state constitution and how it relates to the US Constitution, democratic principles, and citizenship
Unit 8
Minnesota Through Time
Putting events in Minnesota's history in order, from Fort Snelling and the treaties through statehood, 1862, industry and immigration to today.
Benchmark: 6.4.20.1; 6.4.22.3 · the order of events in Minnesota's history, and how Minnesotans have worked for freedom and equality
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