Curriculum / Global Curriculum / Grade 4

Grade 4 World Studies.

10textbooks

250lessons

89competencies

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The whole year, lesson by lesson.

Textbook 1Mapping the Continents — Latitude, Longitude, and Physical Patterns

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Latitude, the Equator, and Hemispheres

Chapter 2

Longitude, the Prime Meridian, and Global Position

Chapter 3

Physical Features of Africa, Europe, and Asia

Chapter 4

Physical Features of the Americas, Oceania, and Antarctica

Textbook 2Climate, Biomes, Rivers, Mountains, and Settlement

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

From Climate Zones to Biomes

Chapter 2

Rivers and Floodplains

Chapter 3

Mountains, Passes, and Settlement

Chapter 4

Physical Settings and Settlement Choices

Textbook 3Culture, Environment, and Cultural Regions

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Adapting to Different Environments

Chapter 2

Similar Environments, Different Cultural Responses

Chapter 3

What Is a Cultural Region?

Chapter 4

Build a Culture–Place Profile

Textbook 4Levels of Government, Leadership, and Citizenship

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Levels of Government

Chapter 2

Different Ways Leaders Are Chosen

Chapter 3

Citizenship and Political Membership

Chapter 4

Participation Across Levels of Government

Textbook 5Resources, Scarcity, Goods, and Early Trade

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Resources and Scarcity

Chapter 2

Where Goods Come From

Chapter 3

Early Markets and Trade Routes

Chapter 4

Weights, Measures, Seals, and Records

Textbook 6Mesopotamia — Cities Between the Rivers

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Rivers, Irrigation, and the Rise of Mesopotamian Cities

Chapter 2

City-States, Leadership, and Public Work

Chapter 3

Cuneiform, Scribes, Work, and Trade

Chapter 4

Mesopotamian Belief, Myth, and Written Law

Textbook 7Ancient Egypt — Civilization Along the Nile

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

The Nile and the Geography of Ancient Egypt

Chapter 2

Pharaohs, Government, and the Egyptian State

Chapter 3

Writing, Work, Architecture, and Trade

Chapter 4

Egyptian Gods, Temples, Death, and the Afterlife

Textbook 8The Indus Valley — Planned Cities and an Unread Script

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Rivers, Monsoons, and the Indus Civilization

Chapter 2

Planned Cities, Water, and Standardization

Chapter 3

Work, Seals, Weights, and Trade

Chapter 4

Script, Belief, Government, and the Indus Transformation

Textbook 9Early China — Rivers, Bronze, Writing, and Ancestors

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

River Systems and Early Settlement in China

Chapter 2

Shang Cities, Kings, Warfare, and Bronze

Chapter 3

Oracle Bones, Writing, Deities, and Ancestors

Chapter 4

The Zhou Transition and the Mandate of Heaven

Textbook 10Comparing the First Civilizations — Sources, Systems, and Connections

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Building a Real Timeline of the First Civilizations

Chapter 2

Comparing Cities, Government, Writing, and Law

Chapter 3

Comparing Belief, Work, Resources, and Trade

Chapter 4

More Than One Account of the First Civilizations

Every coin is a 15-minute lesson.

Explained simply, shown with pictures, then put to the test. Stars are chapter reviews. The trophy is the final review.

See how a lesson works

Every competency, covered.

The 89 competencies set for Grade 4 World Studies, and every one has lessons behind it.

Mapping the Continents — Latitude, Longitude, and Physical Patterns

9 competencies

Explain latitude as imaginary east–west circles used to describe distance north or south of the Equator.
Explain longitude as imaginary north–south lines used to describe distance east or west of the Prime Meridian.
Identify the Equator, Prime Meridian, Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, Eastern Hemisphere, and Western Hemisphere.
Use a simple latitude-and-longitude grid to locate broad places and compare relative position.
Locate and describe major mountains, plateaus, plains, deserts, rivers, lakes, peninsulas, islands, and coastal patterns of the continents.
Compare physical patterns across two or more continents using maps and geographic evidence.
Read layered physical, climate, biome, and settlement maps.
Create a map using title, legend, scale, latitude, longitude, physical features, and selected settlement information.
Use geographic evidence without claiming that environment completely determines human behavior.

Climate, Biomes, Rivers, Mountains, and Settlement

13 competencies

Distinguish climate from biome.
Identify major world biomes through broad climate and vegetation patterns.
Explain that biome boundaries are approximate and contain local variation.
Explain how rivers can support settlement through water, fertile soil, food, transport, and communication while also creating flood risk.
Explain how mountains may influence routes, defense, water supply, farming, communication, and settlement.
Compare how two settlements relate to rivers, mountains, coasts, plains, deserts, or other physical settings.
Read layered physical, climate, biome, and settlement maps.
Use geographic evidence without claiming that environment completely determines human behavior.
Explain that people adapt to physical settings through choices involving housing, clothing, food, work, movement, storage, technology, and scheduling.
Distinguish environmental influence from environmental determinism.
Compare how communities respond differently to similar physical conditions.
Explain that cultural practices may shape the way people use the same environment.
Explain how rivers, mountains, deserts, coasts, and grasslands may influence—but not dictate—communication and cultural interaction.

Culture, Environment, and Cultural Regions

11 competencies

Explain that people adapt to physical settings through choices involving housing, clothing, food, work, movement, storage, technology, and scheduling.
Distinguish environmental influence from environmental determinism.
Compare how communities respond differently to similar physical conditions.
Explain that cultural practices may shape the way people use the same environment.
Define a cultural region as an area identified through overlapping cultural characteristics.
Explain that cultural regions may overlap and may not match political borders.
Compare cultural regions using language, foodways, architecture, belief, arts, economy, settlement, or historical connections.
Recognize internal diversity within every cultural region.
Create a culture–place profile using maps, images, objects, and written accounts.
Explain how rivers, mountains, deserts, coasts, and grasslands may influence—but not dictate—communication and cultural interaction.
Use precise language that separates evidence, general pattern, exception, and uncertainty.

Levels of Government, Leadership, and Citizenship

13 competencies

Identify local, intermediate or regional, and national levels of government in a general comparative framework.
Explain that the names and exact responsibilities of government levels vary among countries.
Match common public responsibilities to the level or levels of government that may address them.
Explain that responsibilities may overlap and require coordination among government levels.
Identify election, inheritance, appointment, council selection, rotation, and qualification as different methods by which leaders may be chosen.
Describe a leadership-selection method without ranking it or using it to classify an entire political system.
Explain that a leader’s authority depends on a role, law, custom, institution, or agreed process.
Define citizenship as legal membership in a political community.
Distinguish citizenship from residence, ancestry, culture, language, or personal identity.
Identify general rights and responsibilities commonly associated with citizenship while recognizing that exact rules vary.
Describe several ways citizens may participate in public life.
Determine which level or public institution should receive a stated civic concern.
Explain how one public issue may affect communities differently at local, regional, and national scales.

Resources, Scarcity, Goods, and Early Trade

19 competencies

Define a resource as something used to meet a need, perform work, or produce a good or service.
Identify materials, land, water, labor, skills, tools, time, information, and places as possible resources.
Explain scarcity as the condition in which available resources are limited relative to possible uses.
Explain that scarcity requires people and communities to prioritize among competing uses.
Distinguish scarcity from the complete absence of a resource.
Trace a good from source material through processing, production, transport, exchange, and use.
Explain that useful materials are distributed unevenly across places.
Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Identify rivers, seas, roads, mountain passes, carts, boats, and pack animals as supports for early trade.
Explain how weights, measures, seals, labels, and written records can support exchange.
Distinguish local exchange from longer-distance early trade.
Trace an early trade connection among settlements or regions.
Explain that trade creates benefits, dependencies, costs, and risks without deciding that all trade is necessarily beneficial.
Compare two possible uses of a limited resource using stated needs and evidence.
Explain how rivers, coasts, roads, and mountain passes connect settlements.
Explain how trade can move information, technologies, measurement systems, and artistic forms as well as goods.
Identify boats, carts, pack animals, roads, ports, storehouses, seals, and writing as technologies supporting connection.
Explain how flood, drought, damaged routes, conflict, or political change may disrupt connections.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.

Mesopotamia — Cities Between the Rivers

21 competencies

Explain that useful materials are distributed unevenly across places.
Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Explain how weights, measures, seals, labels, and written records can support exchange.
Explain how rivers can support settlement through water, fertile soil, food, transport, and communication while also creating flood risk.
Use geographic evidence without claiming that environment completely determines human behavior.
Trace the movement of a material or product across several places.
Explain that people adapt to physical settings through choices involving housing, clothing, food, work, movement, storage, technology, and scheduling.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.
Explain what a source shows and what it cannot reveal.
Compare two accounts of the same event, ruler, building project, or historical development.
Identify points of agreement and disagreement between accounts.
Recognize that accounts select different details even when they do not directly contradict one another.
Use translated ancient writing cautiously as evidence.
Use several sources to construct a guided historical account.
Explain myth as a traditional or sacred account carrying cultural meaning rather than simply a false story.
Define polytheism as belief involving multiple deities.
Describe how early civilizations associated deities with natural forces, places, occupations, protection, fertility, rulership, or other concerns.
Identify temples, sacred spaces, offerings, rituals, and religious specialists as features of some early civilizations.
Use artifacts, architecture, images, burials, and texts as evidence about ancient belief.
Explain how belief could shape art, calendars, authority, burial, architecture, and community practices.
Recognize that surviving official or elite religious evidence may not reveal every person’s belief or practice.

Ancient Egypt — Civilization Along the Nile

21 competencies

Explain that a leader’s authority depends on a role, law, custom, institution, or agreed process.
Trace a good from source material through processing, production, transport, exchange, and use.
Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Trace an early trade connection among settlements or regions.
Explain how rivers can support settlement through water, fertile soil, food, transport, and communication while also creating flood risk.
Compare how two settlements relate to rivers, mountains, coasts, plains, deserts, or other physical settings.
Use geographic evidence without claiming that environment completely determines human behavior.
Explain how rivers, coasts, roads, and mountain passes connect settlements.
Trace the movement of a material or product across several places.
Sequence developments and identify overlap among early civilizations.
Estimate the duration of a historical period using approximate dates.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.
Compare two accounts of the same event, ruler, building project, or historical development.
Recognize that accounts select different details even when they do not directly contradict one another.
Use translated ancient writing cautiously as evidence.
Define polytheism as belief involving multiple deities.
Describe how early civilizations associated deities with natural forces, places, occupations, protection, fertility, rulership, or other concerns.
Identify temples, sacred spaces, offerings, rituals, and religious specialists as features of some early civilizations.
Describe ancient Egyptian beliefs concerning death and the afterlife at an introductory level.
Use artifacts, architecture, images, burials, and texts as evidence about ancient belief.
Recognize that surviving official or elite religious evidence may not reveal every person’s belief or practice.

The Indus Valley — Planned Cities and an Unread Script

18 competencies

Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Explain how weights, measures, seals, labels, and written records can support exchange.
Trace an early trade connection among settlements or regions.
Explain how rivers can support settlement through water, fertile soil, food, transport, and communication while also creating flood risk.
Read layered physical, climate, biome, and settlement maps.
Explain how rivers, coasts, roads, and mountain passes connect settlements.
Trace the movement of a material or product across several places.
Compare the degree and direction of connection among two early civilizations or regions.
Distinguish evidence of contact from an unsupported claim that one civilization copied another.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.
Explain what a source shows and what it cannot reveal.
Explain why an undeciphered writing system limits historical knowledge.
Mark uncertainty when evidence supports more than one explanation.
Distinguish direct source evidence, historical inference, and unsupported invention.
Compare continuity and change across a civilization’s development without formally evaluating source bias.
Use artifacts, architecture, images, burials, and texts as evidence about ancient belief.
Distinguish evidence about belief from modern speculation.
Recognize that surviving official or elite religious evidence may not reveal every person’s belief or practice.

Early China — Rivers, Bronze, Writing, and Ancestors

20 competencies

Trace a good from source material through processing, production, transport, exchange, and use.
Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Explain how rivers can support settlement through water, fertile soil, food, transport, and communication while also creating flood risk.
Compare how two settlements relate to rivers, mountains, coasts, plains, deserts, or other physical settings.
Read and create timelines using BCE and CE.
Sequence developments and identify overlap among early civilizations.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.
Explain what a source shows and what it cannot reveal.
Compare two accounts of the same event, ruler, building project, or historical development.
Identify points of agreement and disagreement between accounts.
Recognize that accounts select different details even when they do not directly contradict one another.
Use translated ancient writing cautiously as evidence.
Mark uncertainty when evidence supports more than one explanation.
Distinguish direct source evidence, historical inference, and unsupported invention.
Compare continuity and change across a civilization’s development without formally evaluating source bias.
Describe ancestor veneration and communication with ancestors in societies where evidence supports such practices.
Use artifacts, architecture, images, burials, and texts as evidence about ancient belief.
Distinguish evidence about belief from modern speculation.
Explain how belief could shape art, calendars, authority, burial, architecture, and community practices.
Recognize that surviving official or elite religious evidence may not reveal every person’s belief or practice.

Comparing the First Civilizations — Sources, Systems, and Connections

24 competencies

Explain that a leader’s authority depends on a role, law, custom, institution, or agreed process.
Explain that useful materials are distributed unevenly across places.
Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Explain how unequal access to useful materials can create interdependence.
Create a system map showing settlements, resources, routes, workers, records, and exchanged goods.
Distinguish evidence of contact from an unsupported claim that one civilization copied another.
Read and create timelines using BCE and CE.
Explain that BCE dates count backward toward the beginning of CE.
Sequence developments and identify overlap among early civilizations.
Estimate the duration of a historical period using approximate dates.
Formulate a focused question answerable through supplied historical sources.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.
Explain what a source shows and what it cannot reveal.
Compare two accounts of the same event, ruler, building project, or historical development.
Identify points of agreement and disagreement between accounts.
Recognize that accounts select different details even when they do not directly contradict one another.
Explain why an undeciphered writing system limits historical knowledge.
Use several sources to construct a guided historical account.
Mark uncertainty when evidence supports more than one explanation.
Distinguish direct source evidence, historical inference, and unsupported invention.
Compare continuity and change across a civilization’s development without formally evaluating source bias.
Compare beliefs from early civilizations descriptively without ranking truth or value.
Explain how belief could shape art, calendars, authority, burial, architecture, and community practices.
Recognize that surviving official or elite religious evidence may not reveal every person’s belief or practice.

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The whole year, lesson by lesson.

Textbook 1Mapping the Continents — Latitude, Longitude, and Physical Patterns

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Latitude, the Equator, and Hemispheres

Chapter 2

Longitude, the Prime Meridian, and Global Position

Chapter 3

Physical Features of Africa, Europe, and Asia

Chapter 4

Physical Features of the Americas, Oceania, and Antarctica

Textbook 2Climate, Biomes, Rivers, Mountains, and Settlement

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

From Climate Zones to Biomes

Chapter 2

Rivers and Floodplains

Chapter 3

Mountains, Passes, and Settlement

Chapter 4

Physical Settings and Settlement Choices

Textbook 3Culture, Environment, and Cultural Regions

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Adapting to Different Environments

Chapter 2

Similar Environments, Different Cultural Responses

Chapter 3

What Is a Cultural Region?

Chapter 4

Build a Culture–Place Profile

Textbook 4Levels of Government, Leadership, and Citizenship

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Levels of Government

Chapter 2

Different Ways Leaders Are Chosen

Chapter 3

Citizenship and Political Membership

Chapter 4

Participation Across Levels of Government

Textbook 5Resources, Scarcity, Goods, and Early Trade

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Resources and Scarcity

Chapter 2

Where Goods Come From

Chapter 3

Early Markets and Trade Routes

Chapter 4

Weights, Measures, Seals, and Records

Textbook 6Mesopotamia — Cities Between the Rivers

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Rivers, Irrigation, and the Rise of Mesopotamian Cities

Chapter 2

City-States, Leadership, and Public Work

Chapter 3

Cuneiform, Scribes, Work, and Trade

Chapter 4

Mesopotamian Belief, Myth, and Written Law

Textbook 7Ancient Egypt — Civilization Along the Nile

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

The Nile and the Geography of Ancient Egypt

Chapter 2

Pharaohs, Government, and the Egyptian State

Chapter 3

Writing, Work, Architecture, and Trade

Chapter 4

Egyptian Gods, Temples, Death, and the Afterlife

Textbook 8The Indus Valley — Planned Cities and an Unread Script

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Rivers, Monsoons, and the Indus Civilization

Chapter 2

Planned Cities, Water, and Standardization

Chapter 3

Work, Seals, Weights, and Trade

Chapter 4

Script, Belief, Government, and the Indus Transformation

Textbook 9Early China — Rivers, Bronze, Writing, and Ancestors

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

River Systems and Early Settlement in China

Chapter 2

Shang Cities, Kings, Warfare, and Bronze

Chapter 3

Oracle Bones, Writing, Deities, and Ancestors

Chapter 4

The Zhou Transition and the Mandate of Heaven

Textbook 10Comparing the First Civilizations — Sources, Systems, and Connections

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Building a Real Timeline of the First Civilizations

Chapter 2

Comparing Cities, Government, Writing, and Law

Chapter 3

Comparing Belief, Work, Resources, and Trade

Chapter 4

More Than One Account of the First Civilizations

Every competency, covered.

The 89 competencies set for Grade 4 World Studies, and every one has lessons behind it.

Mapping the Continents — Latitude, Longitude, and Physical Patterns

9 competencies

Explain latitude as imaginary east–west circles used to describe distance north or south of the Equator.
Explain longitude as imaginary north–south lines used to describe distance east or west of the Prime Meridian.
Identify the Equator, Prime Meridian, Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, Eastern Hemisphere, and Western Hemisphere.
Use a simple latitude-and-longitude grid to locate broad places and compare relative position.
Locate and describe major mountains, plateaus, plains, deserts, rivers, lakes, peninsulas, islands, and coastal patterns of the continents.
Compare physical patterns across two or more continents using maps and geographic evidence.
Read layered physical, climate, biome, and settlement maps.
Create a map using title, legend, scale, latitude, longitude, physical features, and selected settlement information.
Use geographic evidence without claiming that environment completely determines human behavior.

Climate, Biomes, Rivers, Mountains, and Settlement

13 competencies

Distinguish climate from biome.
Identify major world biomes through broad climate and vegetation patterns.
Explain that biome boundaries are approximate and contain local variation.
Explain how rivers can support settlement through water, fertile soil, food, transport, and communication while also creating flood risk.
Explain how mountains may influence routes, defense, water supply, farming, communication, and settlement.
Compare how two settlements relate to rivers, mountains, coasts, plains, deserts, or other physical settings.
Read layered physical, climate, biome, and settlement maps.
Use geographic evidence without claiming that environment completely determines human behavior.
Explain that people adapt to physical settings through choices involving housing, clothing, food, work, movement, storage, technology, and scheduling.
Distinguish environmental influence from environmental determinism.
Compare how communities respond differently to similar physical conditions.
Explain that cultural practices may shape the way people use the same environment.
Explain how rivers, mountains, deserts, coasts, and grasslands may influence—but not dictate—communication and cultural interaction.

Culture, Environment, and Cultural Regions

11 competencies

Explain that people adapt to physical settings through choices involving housing, clothing, food, work, movement, storage, technology, and scheduling.
Distinguish environmental influence from environmental determinism.
Compare how communities respond differently to similar physical conditions.
Explain that cultural practices may shape the way people use the same environment.
Define a cultural region as an area identified through overlapping cultural characteristics.
Explain that cultural regions may overlap and may not match political borders.
Compare cultural regions using language, foodways, architecture, belief, arts, economy, settlement, or historical connections.
Recognize internal diversity within every cultural region.
Create a culture–place profile using maps, images, objects, and written accounts.
Explain how rivers, mountains, deserts, coasts, and grasslands may influence—but not dictate—communication and cultural interaction.
Use precise language that separates evidence, general pattern, exception, and uncertainty.

Levels of Government, Leadership, and Citizenship

13 competencies

Identify local, intermediate or regional, and national levels of government in a general comparative framework.
Explain that the names and exact responsibilities of government levels vary among countries.
Match common public responsibilities to the level or levels of government that may address them.
Explain that responsibilities may overlap and require coordination among government levels.
Identify election, inheritance, appointment, council selection, rotation, and qualification as different methods by which leaders may be chosen.
Describe a leadership-selection method without ranking it or using it to classify an entire political system.
Explain that a leader’s authority depends on a role, law, custom, institution, or agreed process.
Define citizenship as legal membership in a political community.
Distinguish citizenship from residence, ancestry, culture, language, or personal identity.
Identify general rights and responsibilities commonly associated with citizenship while recognizing that exact rules vary.
Describe several ways citizens may participate in public life.
Determine which level or public institution should receive a stated civic concern.
Explain how one public issue may affect communities differently at local, regional, and national scales.

Resources, Scarcity, Goods, and Early Trade

19 competencies

Define a resource as something used to meet a need, perform work, or produce a good or service.
Identify materials, land, water, labor, skills, tools, time, information, and places as possible resources.
Explain scarcity as the condition in which available resources are limited relative to possible uses.
Explain that scarcity requires people and communities to prioritize among competing uses.
Distinguish scarcity from the complete absence of a resource.
Trace a good from source material through processing, production, transport, exchange, and use.
Explain that useful materials are distributed unevenly across places.
Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Identify rivers, seas, roads, mountain passes, carts, boats, and pack animals as supports for early trade.
Explain how weights, measures, seals, labels, and written records can support exchange.
Distinguish local exchange from longer-distance early trade.
Trace an early trade connection among settlements or regions.
Explain that trade creates benefits, dependencies, costs, and risks without deciding that all trade is necessarily beneficial.
Compare two possible uses of a limited resource using stated needs and evidence.
Explain how rivers, coasts, roads, and mountain passes connect settlements.
Explain how trade can move information, technologies, measurement systems, and artistic forms as well as goods.
Identify boats, carts, pack animals, roads, ports, storehouses, seals, and writing as technologies supporting connection.
Explain how flood, drought, damaged routes, conflict, or political change may disrupt connections.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.

Mesopotamia — Cities Between the Rivers

21 competencies

Explain that useful materials are distributed unevenly across places.
Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Explain how weights, measures, seals, labels, and written records can support exchange.
Explain how rivers can support settlement through water, fertile soil, food, transport, and communication while also creating flood risk.
Use geographic evidence without claiming that environment completely determines human behavior.
Trace the movement of a material or product across several places.
Explain that people adapt to physical settings through choices involving housing, clothing, food, work, movement, storage, technology, and scheduling.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.
Explain what a source shows and what it cannot reveal.
Compare two accounts of the same event, ruler, building project, or historical development.
Identify points of agreement and disagreement between accounts.
Recognize that accounts select different details even when they do not directly contradict one another.
Use translated ancient writing cautiously as evidence.
Use several sources to construct a guided historical account.
Explain myth as a traditional or sacred account carrying cultural meaning rather than simply a false story.
Define polytheism as belief involving multiple deities.
Describe how early civilizations associated deities with natural forces, places, occupations, protection, fertility, rulership, or other concerns.
Identify temples, sacred spaces, offerings, rituals, and religious specialists as features of some early civilizations.
Use artifacts, architecture, images, burials, and texts as evidence about ancient belief.
Explain how belief could shape art, calendars, authority, burial, architecture, and community practices.
Recognize that surviving official or elite religious evidence may not reveal every person’s belief or practice.

Ancient Egypt — Civilization Along the Nile

21 competencies

Explain that a leader’s authority depends on a role, law, custom, institution, or agreed process.
Trace a good from source material through processing, production, transport, exchange, and use.
Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Trace an early trade connection among settlements or regions.
Explain how rivers can support settlement through water, fertile soil, food, transport, and communication while also creating flood risk.
Compare how two settlements relate to rivers, mountains, coasts, plains, deserts, or other physical settings.
Use geographic evidence without claiming that environment completely determines human behavior.
Explain how rivers, coasts, roads, and mountain passes connect settlements.
Trace the movement of a material or product across several places.
Sequence developments and identify overlap among early civilizations.
Estimate the duration of a historical period using approximate dates.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.
Compare two accounts of the same event, ruler, building project, or historical development.
Recognize that accounts select different details even when they do not directly contradict one another.
Use translated ancient writing cautiously as evidence.
Define polytheism as belief involving multiple deities.
Describe how early civilizations associated deities with natural forces, places, occupations, protection, fertility, rulership, or other concerns.
Identify temples, sacred spaces, offerings, rituals, and religious specialists as features of some early civilizations.
Describe ancient Egyptian beliefs concerning death and the afterlife at an introductory level.
Use artifacts, architecture, images, burials, and texts as evidence about ancient belief.
Recognize that surviving official or elite religious evidence may not reveal every person’s belief or practice.

The Indus Valley — Planned Cities and an Unread Script

18 competencies

Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Explain how weights, measures, seals, labels, and written records can support exchange.
Trace an early trade connection among settlements or regions.
Explain how rivers can support settlement through water, fertile soil, food, transport, and communication while also creating flood risk.
Read layered physical, climate, biome, and settlement maps.
Explain how rivers, coasts, roads, and mountain passes connect settlements.
Trace the movement of a material or product across several places.
Compare the degree and direction of connection among two early civilizations or regions.
Distinguish evidence of contact from an unsupported claim that one civilization copied another.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.
Explain what a source shows and what it cannot reveal.
Explain why an undeciphered writing system limits historical knowledge.
Mark uncertainty when evidence supports more than one explanation.
Distinguish direct source evidence, historical inference, and unsupported invention.
Compare continuity and change across a civilization’s development without formally evaluating source bias.
Use artifacts, architecture, images, burials, and texts as evidence about ancient belief.
Distinguish evidence about belief from modern speculation.
Recognize that surviving official or elite religious evidence may not reveal every person’s belief or practice.

Early China — Rivers, Bronze, Writing, and Ancestors

20 competencies

Trace a good from source material through processing, production, transport, exchange, and use.
Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Explain how rivers can support settlement through water, fertile soil, food, transport, and communication while also creating flood risk.
Compare how two settlements relate to rivers, mountains, coasts, plains, deserts, or other physical settings.
Read and create timelines using BCE and CE.
Sequence developments and identify overlap among early civilizations.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.
Explain what a source shows and what it cannot reveal.
Compare two accounts of the same event, ruler, building project, or historical development.
Identify points of agreement and disagreement between accounts.
Recognize that accounts select different details even when they do not directly contradict one another.
Use translated ancient writing cautiously as evidence.
Mark uncertainty when evidence supports more than one explanation.
Distinguish direct source evidence, historical inference, and unsupported invention.
Compare continuity and change across a civilization’s development without formally evaluating source bias.
Describe ancestor veneration and communication with ancestors in societies where evidence supports such practices.
Use artifacts, architecture, images, burials, and texts as evidence about ancient belief.
Distinguish evidence about belief from modern speculation.
Explain how belief could shape art, calendars, authority, burial, architecture, and community practices.
Recognize that surviving official or elite religious evidence may not reveal every person’s belief or practice.

Comparing the First Civilizations — Sources, Systems, and Connections

24 competencies

Explain that a leader’s authority depends on a role, law, custom, institution, or agreed process.
Explain that useful materials are distributed unevenly across places.
Explain how differences in available materials, skills, and products encourage trade.
Explain how unequal access to useful materials can create interdependence.
Create a system map showing settlements, resources, routes, workers, records, and exchanged goods.
Distinguish evidence of contact from an unsupported claim that one civilization copied another.
Read and create timelines using BCE and CE.
Explain that BCE dates count backward toward the beginning of CE.
Sequence developments and identify overlap among early civilizations.
Estimate the duration of a historical period using approximate dates.
Formulate a focused question answerable through supplied historical sources.
Use archaeological, written, artistic, architectural, and environmental evidence to answer a question.
Explain what a source shows and what it cannot reveal.
Compare two accounts of the same event, ruler, building project, or historical development.
Identify points of agreement and disagreement between accounts.
Recognize that accounts select different details even when they do not directly contradict one another.
Explain why an undeciphered writing system limits historical knowledge.
Use several sources to construct a guided historical account.
Mark uncertainty when evidence supports more than one explanation.
Distinguish direct source evidence, historical inference, and unsupported invention.
Compare continuity and change across a civilization’s development without formally evaluating source bias.
Compare beliefs from early civilizations descriptively without ranking truth or value.
Explain how belief could shape art, calendars, authority, burial, architecture, and community practices.
Recognize that surviving official or elite religious evidence may not reveal every person’s belief or practice.