Curriculum / Global Curriculum / Grade 6

Grade 6 World Studies.

10textbooks

250lessons

106competencies

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The whole year, lesson by lesson.

Textbook 1World Regions, Population, and Human–Environment Interaction

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Population Distribution and Settlement Patterns

Chapter 2

Urban, Rural, Pastoral, and Mobile Communities

Chapter 3

Human–Environment Interaction

Chapter 4

Regional Geography of the Post-Classical World

Textbook 2Governments, Law, Perspective, and Corroboration

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Governing Kingdoms, Empires, Cities, and Regions

Chapter 2

Law Codes, Compilations, Customs, and Courts

Chapter 3

Perspective Within a Historical Source

Chapter 4

Citing and Corroborating Historical Evidence

Textbook 3The Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, and Trans-Saharan Trade

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

The Silk Roads and Eurasian Exchange

Chapter 2

The Indian Ocean Trading World

Chapter 3

The Trans-Saharan Trade Networks

Chapter 4

Comparing Networks, Interdependence, and Disruption

Textbook 4Byzantium — The Eastern Roman Empire

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Constantinople and Eastern Roman Continuity

Chapter 2

Justinian, Theodora, Government, and Law

Chapter 3

Orthodox Christianity, Art, and Religious Authority

Chapter 4

Diplomacy, Trade, Crusades, and Byzantine Transformation

Textbook 5The Rise and Expansion of Islam

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Arabia Before Islam

Chapter 2

Muhammad, the Qur’an, and the Early Muslim Community

Chapter 3

The Rashidun Caliphate and the Question of Succession

Chapter 4

The Umayyad Caliphate and a Diverse Empire

Textbook 6The Islamic Caliphates and the Golden Age

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Abbasid Baghdad, Government, and Economy

Chapter 2

Translation, Mathematics, Astronomy, and Medicine

Chapter 3

Religion, Law, Education, Art, and Urban Society

Chapter 4

Regional Islamic Societies and Historical Connections

Textbook 7Medieval Europe — Kingdoms, Church, Towns, and Change

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Post-Roman Kingdoms and the Carolingian World

Chapter 2

Feudal Relationships, Manors, Law, and Rural Society

Chapter 3

Church, Monasteries, Towns, Guilds, and Learning

Chapter 4

Crusades, Black Death, and Late Medieval Transformation

Textbook 8Tang and Song China — Empire, Economy, and Innovation

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Tang Government, Chang’an, and Imperial Expansion

Chapter 2

Tang Religion, Culture, and Silk Road Exchange

Chapter 3

Song Agriculture, Cities, Markets, and Technology

Chapter 4

Song Government, Frontier Powers, and Mongol Conquest

Textbook 9West African Empires — Ghana, Mali, and Songhai

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Sahel Geography, Trade, and the Ghana Empire

Chapter 2

Mali, Sundiata, and Mansa Musa

Chapter 3

Cities, Scholarship, Islam, and Everyday Life in Mali

Chapter 4

Songhai, Askia Muhammad, and Imperial Transformation

Textbook 10The Aztec and Inca Empires

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

The Mexica, Tenochtitlan, and the Aztec Empire

Chapter 2

Aztec Economy, Society, Religion, and Warfare

Chapter 3

Andean Geography and the Rise of the Inca

Chapter 4

Inca Administration, Labor, Religion, and Comparative Empire

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 106 competencies set for Grade 6 World Studies, and every one has lessons behind it.

World Regions, Population, and Human–Environment Interaction

18 competencies

Explain population distribution as the spatial pattern of where people live.
Explain population density as the number of people living within a defined area.
Read and interpret an introductory population-density map.
Explain how water, arable land, climate, terrain, transport routes, work, security, disease environment, and political conditions may influence population patterns.
Distinguish urban, rural, agricultural, pastoral, maritime, frontier, and mobile settlement patterns.
Explain human–environment interaction as a two-way relationship in which environments influence people and people modify environments.
Describe irrigation, terracing, drainage, reservoirs, canals, roads, ports, pasture management, forest clearance, and urban construction as historical environmental modifications.
Identify intended benefits and possible unintended effects of a historical environmental modification.
Compare the physical and population geography of the Mediterranean, Southwest Asia and North Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, the Sahel, Mesoamerica, and the Andes.
Explain how deserts, steppes, seas, monsoon zones, river valleys, mountain passes, tropical lowlands, and highlands shaped historical routes.
Use physical, climate, population, settlement, resource, and route maps together to answer a historical question.
Construct a regional geographic profile that connects physical setting, population, settlement, work, and historical exchange.
Evaluate a claim about population or settlement and identify where the evidence is incomplete or overly deterministic.
Explain how population centers and routes may change after war, political change, environmental stress, commercial growth, or technological development.
Explain historical interdependence as mutual or unequal reliance among regions, producers, states, merchants, institutions, and consumers.
Explain how a trade network connects environmental conditions, labor, production, transport, finance, political authority, and consumption.
Explain cultural identity as a person’s or community’s connection to shared language, religion, region, occupation, ancestry, customs, political membership, or historical experience.
Place Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Daoism, Islam, and selected regional traditions within broad historical and geographic contexts.

Governments, Law, Perspective, and Corroboration

26 competencies

Compare city-state, kingdom, empire, caliphate, dynasty, manor, commune, and confederation as historical political forms.
Explain how a central government may govern through provincial officials, local rulers, tax collectors, judges, military officers, religious institutions, and customary authorities.
Explain the relationship between central authority and local autonomy in a historical state.
Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Compare hereditary, appointed, elected, military, religious, and examination-based routes into public authority.
Distinguish a law code, legal compilation, decree, customary law, religious law, legal commentary, and case record.
Describe the historical context and selected provisions of Hammurabi’s laws.
Describe the Roman Twelve Tables and later Roman legal development at an introductory level.
Explain the purpose and historical importance of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis.
Describe Islamic jurisprudence as a historically developing tradition drawing on the Qur’an, reports about Muhammad, legal reasoning, and scholarly interpretation.
Describe canon law, royal law, local custom, manorial obligation, and urban privilege as overlapping medieval European legal traditions.
Explain that written law may differ from actual enforcement and everyday practice.
Use historical evidence to compare government and law without ranking one civilization’s institutions as universally superior.
Cite a historical source by creator, title or description, source type, date, or assigned reference.
Integrate a brief paraphrase or short quotation into a source-supported historical statement.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Identify how social role, religion, political position, region, occupation, gender, or relationship to an event may shape perspective.
Distinguish perspective from deliberate dishonesty.
Identify voices represented and absent within a source set.
Corroborate a factual claim by comparing it with evidence from another source.
Distinguish independent corroboration from repetition by sources that depend on the same earlier account.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Construct a historical paragraph containing a claim, cited evidence, explanation, and qualification.
Construct a short account using at least three different source types.
Explain why a source may be useful for one question but limited for another.
Identify questions of reliability, bias, and deeper motive that require Grade 7 analysis.

The Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, and Trans-Saharan Trade

28 competencies

Define a historical trade network as connected routes, places, producers, merchants, transporters, institutions, and consumers.
Distinguish a trade route from a complete trade network.
Explain how caravan animals, ships, ports, roads, inns, warehouses, marketplaces, guides, maps, credit, partnerships, currencies, and written contracts supported trade.
Explain how monsoon winds structured seasonal Indian Ocean travel.
Explain how oasis towns, camel caravans, pasture, guides, and political protection supported desert trade.
Trace silk, spices, textiles, ceramics, paper, horses, metals, salt, gold, ivory, books, timber, grain, and other goods through historical networks.
Distinguish luxury goods from high-volume or essential goods while recognizing overlap.
Explain how merchant partnerships, credit arrangements, currency exchange, and written orders reduced some commercial risks.
Explain that enslaved people were traded and exploited within several historical regions and systems.
Distinguish post-classical systems of enslavement from the later racialized transatlantic slave trade.
Compare benefits, burdens, dependencies, and risks experienced by different participants in a trade network.
Analyze how political stability, war, piracy, banditry, environmental disruption, or disease affected historical exchange.
Construct a network map showing production, movement, taxation, exchange, and consumption.
Explain how a trade network connects environmental conditions, labor, production, transport, finance, political authority, and consumption.
Trace the movement of goods, technologies, religious ideas, artistic forms, mathematical knowledge, medical knowledge, stories, and languages through historical networks.
Explain how warfare, taxation, piracy, banditry, political fragmentation, environmental stress, or disease may disrupt exchange.
Explain how network connections may create wealth and opportunity for some participants while imposing labor, taxation, enslavement, displacement, or risk on others.
Compare the Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, and trans-Saharan networks by geography, transport, goods, participants, institutions, and cultural effects.
Distinguish direct exchange from relay trade in which goods pass through several intermediaries.
Explain how merchant, scholarly, religious, and migrant communities maintained connections across political borders.
Create a historical network model containing nodes, routes, flows, institutions, risks, and dependencies.
Evaluate a claim that a network benefited everyone equally and identify missing perspectives.
Describe port cities, caravan towns, capitals, pilgrimage centers, monasteries, frontier zones, and market cities as places of cultural interaction.
Identify merchants, sailors, pastoralists, pilgrims, scholars, soldiers, diplomats, enslaved people, craftspeople, and migrants as historical carriers of culture.
Explain that cultural exchange may result in adoption, adaptation, translation, resistance, coexistence, or selective borrowing.
Distinguish cultural exchange from complete cultural replacement.
Construct a historical culture-route profile using maps, objects, texts, architecture, and language evidence.
Explain how Islam interacted with existing West African beliefs and political traditions.

Byzantium — The Eastern Roman Empire

22 competencies

Compare city-state, kingdom, empire, caliphate, dynasty, manor, commune, and confederation as historical political forms.
Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Explain the purpose and historical importance of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis.
Explain that written law may differ from actual enforcement and everyday practice.
Describe the economies of Byzantine, Islamic, medieval European, Tang–Song Chinese, West African, Aztec, and Inca societies.
Compare benefits, burdens, dependencies, and risks experienced by different participants in a trade network.
Explain how deserts, steppes, seas, monsoon zones, river valleys, mountain passes, tropical lowlands, and highlands shaped historical routes.
Explain how political stability and infrastructure may encourage exchange.
Explain how warfare, taxation, piracy, banditry, political fragmentation, environmental stress, or disease may disrupt exchange.
Explain that cultural identity may be layered and may change according to context.
Explain that cultural exchange may result in adoption, adaptation, translation, resistance, coexistence, or selective borrowing.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Identify how social role, religion, political position, region, occupation, gender, or relationship to an event may shape perspective.
Identify voices represented and absent within a source set.
Corroborate a factual claim by comparing it with evidence from another source.
Identify agreement, disagreement, different emphasis, and different perspective across accounts.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Describe Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Latin Christianity within their historical institutional contexts.
Explain the historical roles of bishops, patriarchs, popes, monasteries, clergy, councils, and missionaries.
Compare the historical influence of religions descriptively without ranking their truth or value.
Distinguish official religious institutions from household, local, minority, or nonconforming practices.
Use religious texts, buildings, inscriptions, art, law, and material evidence cautiously.

The Rise and Expansion of Islam

22 competencies

Explain how a central government may govern through provincial officials, local rulers, tax collectors, judges, military officers, religious institutions, and customary authorities.
Compare hereditary, appointed, elected, military, religious, and examination-based routes into public authority.
Explain that political and religious authority may be combined, separate, cooperative, or in conflict.
Compare the legal status of people by social rank, religion, gender, occupation, citizenship, freedom, or regional membership in selected historical societies.
Compare the physical and population geography of the Mediterranean, Southwest Asia and North Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, the Sahel, Mesoamerica, and the Andes.
Explain how network connections may create wealth and opportunity for some participants while imposing labor, taxation, enslavement, displacement, or risk on others.
Explain cultural identity as a person’s or community’s connection to shared language, religion, region, occupation, ancestry, customs, political membership, or historical experience.
Explain that cultural exchange may result in adoption, adaptation, translation, resistance, coexistence, or selective borrowing.
Explain how multilingual and multi-religious communities functioned within selected post-classical cities and empires.
Explain how political power or unequal social status can shape cultural exchange.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Identify agreement, disagreement, different emphasis, and different perspective across accounts.
Explain how translation may affect the wording and interpretation of a source.
Distinguish direct source evidence, inference, interpretation, and unsupported claim.
State where evidence remains insufficient or where reasonable interpretations differ.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Describe the religious landscape of Arabia before Islam at an introductory level.
Describe Muhammad’s historical role in the origins of Islam.
Describe the Qur’an as Islam’s sacred text and distinguish it from later biographies, legal works, and collections of reports.
Describe the Five Pillars as widespread foundational practices in Islam while recognizing diversity of interpretation and practice.
Explain the historical origins of the Sunni–Shia division at a basic level.
Distinguish historical study of religion from devotional participation.

The Islamic Caliphates and the Golden Age

25 competencies

Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Describe Islamic jurisprudence as a historically developing tradition drawing on the Qur’an, reports about Muhammad, legal reasoning, and scholarly interpretation.
Explain how caravan animals, ships, ports, roads, inns, warehouses, marketplaces, guides, maps, credit, partnerships, currencies, and written contracts supported trade.
Explain how merchant partnerships, credit arrangements, currency exchange, and written orders reduced some commercial risks.
Describe the economies of Byzantine, Islamic, medieval European, Tang–Song Chinese, West African, Aztec, and Inca societies.
Explain how a trade network connects environmental conditions, labor, production, transport, finance, political authority, and consumption.
Trace the movement of goods, technologies, religious ideas, artistic forms, mathematical knowledge, medical knowledge, stories, and languages through historical networks.
Evaluate a claim that a network benefited everyone equally and identify missing perspectives.
Explain that cultural identity may be layered and may change according to context.
Explain how trade routes can carry languages, artistic styles, religious ideas, technologies, foods, clothing, stories, and social practices.
Explain how multilingual and multi-religious communities functioned within selected post-classical cities and empires.
Compare the cultural identities of two communities connected by trade or political rule.
Use evidence to identify continuity and change in a regional culture across the post-classical period.
Avoid treating medieval or post-classical regional labels as identical to modern national or ethnic identities.
Corroborate a factual claim by comparing it with evidence from another source.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Identify agreement, disagreement, different emphasis, and different perspective across accounts.
Explain how translation may affect the wording and interpretation of a source.
Construct a historical paragraph containing a claim, cited evidence, explanation, and qualification.
Construct a short account using at least three different source types.
Explain that religions spread through several processes, including migration, trade, state support, conquest, missionary activity, scholarship, pilgrimage, intermarriage, and local adoption.
Explain that religious spread usually involves translation, adaptation, debate, and regional variation.
Explain how Islamic institutions influenced law, education, charity, art, architecture, government, scholarship, and trade.
Distinguish official religious institutions from household, local, minority, or nonconforming practices.
Use religious texts, buildings, inscriptions, art, law, and material evidence cautiously.

Medieval Europe — Kingdoms, Church, Towns, and Change

19 competencies

Compare city-state, kingdom, empire, caliphate, dynasty, manor, commune, and confederation as historical political forms.
Explain the relationship between central authority and local autonomy in a historical state.
Explain that political and religious authority may be combined, separate, cooperative, or in conflict.
Describe canon law, royal law, local custom, manorial obligation, and urban privilege as overlapping medieval European legal traditions.
Explain that written law may differ from actual enforcement and everyday practice.
Compare the legal status of people by social rank, religion, gender, occupation, citizenship, freedom, or regional membership in selected historical societies.
Describe the economies of Byzantine, Islamic, medieval European, Tang–Song Chinese, West African, Aztec, and Inca societies.
Explain how agriculture, taxation, labor obligations, craft specialization, markets, and military supply supported post-classical states.
Analyze how political stability, war, piracy, banditry, environmental disruption, or disease affected historical exchange.
Explain how warfare, taxation, piracy, banditry, political fragmentation, environmental stress, or disease may disrupt exchange.
Describe port cities, caravan towns, capitals, pilgrimage centers, monasteries, frontier zones, and market cities as places of cultural interaction.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Identify voices represented and absent within a source set.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Identify agreement, disagreement, different emphasis, and different perspective across accounts.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Explain why a source may be useful for one question but limited for another.
Describe Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Latin Christianity within their historical institutional contexts.
Explain the historical roles of bishops, patriarchs, popes, monasteries, clergy, councils, and missionaries.

Tang and Song China — Empire, Economy, and Innovation

19 competencies

Explain the relationship between central authority and local autonomy in a historical state.
Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Compare hereditary, appointed, elected, military, religious, and examination-based routes into public authority.
Explain that written law may differ from actual enforcement and everyday practice.
Describe the economies of Byzantine, Islamic, medieval European, Tang–Song Chinese, West African, Aztec, and Inca societies.
Explain how agriculture, taxation, labor obligations, craft specialization, markets, and military supply supported post-classical states.
Explain how population centers and routes may change after war, political change, environmental stress, commercial growth, or technological development.
Trace the movement of goods, technologies, religious ideas, artistic forms, mathematical knowledge, medical knowledge, stories, and languages through historical networks.
Explain how political stability and infrastructure may encourage exchange.
Explain how network connections may create wealth and opportunity for some participants while imposing labor, taxation, enslavement, displacement, or risk on others.
Explain how trade routes can carry languages, artistic styles, religious ideas, technologies, foods, clothing, stories, and social practices.
Explain how multilingual and multi-religious communities functioned within selected post-classical cities and empires.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Explain why a source may be useful for one question but limited for another.
Explain that religions spread through several processes, including migration, trade, state support, conquest, missionary activity, scholarship, pilgrimage, intermarriage, and local adoption.
Explain that religious spread usually involves translation, adaptation, debate, and regional variation.
Explain how Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism influenced Tang and Song institutions and culture.

West African Empires — Ghana, Mali, and Songhai

23 competencies

Explain how a central government may govern through provincial officials, local rulers, tax collectors, judges, military officers, religious institutions, and customary authorities.
Explain the relationship between central authority and local autonomy in a historical state.
Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Explain that political and religious authority may be combined, separate, cooperative, or in conflict.
Explain how oasis towns, camel caravans, pasture, guides, and political protection supported desert trade.
Explain how taxes, tolls, tribute, market fees, monopolies, and state protection affected trade.
Explain how agriculture, taxation, labor obligations, craft specialization, markets, and military supply supported post-classical states.
Explain that enslaved people were traded and exploited within several historical regions and systems.
Distinguish post-classical systems of enslavement from the later racialized transatlantic slave trade.
Compare the physical and population geography of the Mediterranean, Southwest Asia and North Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, the Sahel, Mesoamerica, and the Andes.
Describe port cities, caravan towns, capitals, pilgrimage centers, monasteries, frontier zones, and market cities as places of cultural interaction.
Explain how multilingual and multi-religious communities functioned within selected post-classical cities and empires.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Distinguish perspective from deliberate dishonesty.
Identify voices represented and absent within a source set.
Corroborate a factual claim by comparing it with evidence from another source.
Distinguish independent corroboration from repetition by sources that depend on the same earlier account.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Identify agreement, disagreement, different emphasis, and different perspective across accounts.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Explain why a source may be useful for one question but limited for another.
Explain that religions spread through several processes, including migration, trade, state support, conquest, missionary activity, scholarship, pilgrimage, intermarriage, and local adoption.
Explain how Islam interacted with existing West African beliefs and political traditions.

The Aztec and Inca Empires

21 competencies

Explain how a central government may govern through provincial officials, local rulers, tax collectors, judges, military officers, religious institutions, and customary authorities.
Explain the relationship between central authority and local autonomy in a historical state.
Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Compare the legal status of people by social rank, religion, gender, occupation, citizenship, freedom, or regional membership in selected historical societies.
Describe the economies of Byzantine, Islamic, medieval European, Tang–Song Chinese, West African, Aztec, and Inca societies.
Explain how agriculture, taxation, labor obligations, craft specialization, markets, and military supply supported post-classical states.
Explain that enslaved people were traded and exploited within several historical regions and systems.
Explain human–environment interaction as a two-way relationship in which environments influence people and people modify environments.
Describe irrigation, terracing, drainage, reservoirs, canals, roads, ports, pasture management, forest clearance, and urban construction as historical environmental modifications.
Compare the physical and population geography of the Mediterranean, Southwest Asia and North Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, the Sahel, Mesoamerica, and the Andes.
Explain how deserts, steppes, seas, monsoon zones, river valleys, mountain passes, tropical lowlands, and highlands shaped historical routes.
Construct a regional geographic profile that connects physical setting, population, settlement, work, and historical exchange.
Explain how political stability and infrastructure may encourage exchange.
Explain how cities and states depended on distant food, raw materials, horses, metals, salt, gold, timber, books, or luxury goods.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Explain how translation may affect the wording and interpretation of a source.
Construct a short account using at least three different source types.
State where evidence remains insufficient or where reasonable interpretations differ.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Describe Aztec and Inca religious institutions, sacred landscapes, rulers, rituals, deities, ancestors, and calendars.
Distinguish official religious institutions from household, local, minority, or nonconforming practices.

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Start Grade 6 World Studies tonight.

Free to download at launch, on the App Store and Google Play.

The whole year, lesson by lesson.

Textbook 1World Regions, Population, and Human–Environment Interaction

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Population Distribution and Settlement Patterns

Chapter 2

Urban, Rural, Pastoral, and Mobile Communities

Chapter 3

Human–Environment Interaction

Chapter 4

Regional Geography of the Post-Classical World

Textbook 2Governments, Law, Perspective, and Corroboration

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Governing Kingdoms, Empires, Cities, and Regions

Chapter 2

Law Codes, Compilations, Customs, and Courts

Chapter 3

Perspective Within a Historical Source

Chapter 4

Citing and Corroborating Historical Evidence

Textbook 3The Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, and Trans-Saharan Trade

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

The Silk Roads and Eurasian Exchange

Chapter 2

The Indian Ocean Trading World

Chapter 3

The Trans-Saharan Trade Networks

Chapter 4

Comparing Networks, Interdependence, and Disruption

Textbook 4Byzantium — The Eastern Roman Empire

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Constantinople and Eastern Roman Continuity

Chapter 2

Justinian, Theodora, Government, and Law

Chapter 3

Orthodox Christianity, Art, and Religious Authority

Chapter 4

Diplomacy, Trade, Crusades, and Byzantine Transformation

Textbook 5The Rise and Expansion of Islam

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Arabia Before Islam

Chapter 2

Muhammad, the Qur’an, and the Early Muslim Community

Chapter 3

The Rashidun Caliphate and the Question of Succession

Chapter 4

The Umayyad Caliphate and a Diverse Empire

Textbook 6The Islamic Caliphates and the Golden Age

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Abbasid Baghdad, Government, and Economy

Chapter 2

Translation, Mathematics, Astronomy, and Medicine

Chapter 3

Religion, Law, Education, Art, and Urban Society

Chapter 4

Regional Islamic Societies and Historical Connections

Textbook 7Medieval Europe — Kingdoms, Church, Towns, and Change

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Post-Roman Kingdoms and the Carolingian World

Chapter 2

Feudal Relationships, Manors, Law, and Rural Society

Chapter 3

Church, Monasteries, Towns, Guilds, and Learning

Chapter 4

Crusades, Black Death, and Late Medieval Transformation

Textbook 8Tang and Song China — Empire, Economy, and Innovation

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Tang Government, Chang’an, and Imperial Expansion

Chapter 2

Tang Religion, Culture, and Silk Road Exchange

Chapter 3

Song Agriculture, Cities, Markets, and Technology

Chapter 4

Song Government, Frontier Powers, and Mongol Conquest

Textbook 9West African Empires — Ghana, Mali, and Songhai

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

Sahel Geography, Trade, and the Ghana Empire

Chapter 2

Mali, Sundiata, and Mansa Musa

Chapter 3

Cities, Scholarship, Islam, and Everyday Life in Mali

Chapter 4

Songhai, Askia Muhammad, and Imperial Transformation

Textbook 10The Aztec and Inca Empires

4 chapters · 25 lessons

Chapter 1

The Mexica, Tenochtitlan, and the Aztec Empire

Chapter 2

Aztec Economy, Society, Religion, and Warfare

Chapter 3

Andean Geography and the Rise of the Inca

Chapter 4

Inca Administration, Labor, Religion, and Comparative Empire

Every competency, covered.

The 106 competencies set for Grade 6 World Studies, and every one has lessons behind it.

World Regions, Population, and Human–Environment Interaction

18 competencies

Explain population distribution as the spatial pattern of where people live.
Explain population density as the number of people living within a defined area.
Read and interpret an introductory population-density map.
Explain how water, arable land, climate, terrain, transport routes, work, security, disease environment, and political conditions may influence population patterns.
Distinguish urban, rural, agricultural, pastoral, maritime, frontier, and mobile settlement patterns.
Explain human–environment interaction as a two-way relationship in which environments influence people and people modify environments.
Describe irrigation, terracing, drainage, reservoirs, canals, roads, ports, pasture management, forest clearance, and urban construction as historical environmental modifications.
Identify intended benefits and possible unintended effects of a historical environmental modification.
Compare the physical and population geography of the Mediterranean, Southwest Asia and North Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, the Sahel, Mesoamerica, and the Andes.
Explain how deserts, steppes, seas, monsoon zones, river valleys, mountain passes, tropical lowlands, and highlands shaped historical routes.
Use physical, climate, population, settlement, resource, and route maps together to answer a historical question.
Construct a regional geographic profile that connects physical setting, population, settlement, work, and historical exchange.
Evaluate a claim about population or settlement and identify where the evidence is incomplete or overly deterministic.
Explain how population centers and routes may change after war, political change, environmental stress, commercial growth, or technological development.
Explain historical interdependence as mutual or unequal reliance among regions, producers, states, merchants, institutions, and consumers.
Explain how a trade network connects environmental conditions, labor, production, transport, finance, political authority, and consumption.
Explain cultural identity as a person’s or community’s connection to shared language, religion, region, occupation, ancestry, customs, political membership, or historical experience.
Place Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Daoism, Islam, and selected regional traditions within broad historical and geographic contexts.

Governments, Law, Perspective, and Corroboration

26 competencies

Compare city-state, kingdom, empire, caliphate, dynasty, manor, commune, and confederation as historical political forms.
Explain how a central government may govern through provincial officials, local rulers, tax collectors, judges, military officers, religious institutions, and customary authorities.
Explain the relationship between central authority and local autonomy in a historical state.
Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Compare hereditary, appointed, elected, military, religious, and examination-based routes into public authority.
Distinguish a law code, legal compilation, decree, customary law, religious law, legal commentary, and case record.
Describe the historical context and selected provisions of Hammurabi’s laws.
Describe the Roman Twelve Tables and later Roman legal development at an introductory level.
Explain the purpose and historical importance of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis.
Describe Islamic jurisprudence as a historically developing tradition drawing on the Qur’an, reports about Muhammad, legal reasoning, and scholarly interpretation.
Describe canon law, royal law, local custom, manorial obligation, and urban privilege as overlapping medieval European legal traditions.
Explain that written law may differ from actual enforcement and everyday practice.
Use historical evidence to compare government and law without ranking one civilization’s institutions as universally superior.
Cite a historical source by creator, title or description, source type, date, or assigned reference.
Integrate a brief paraphrase or short quotation into a source-supported historical statement.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Identify how social role, religion, political position, region, occupation, gender, or relationship to an event may shape perspective.
Distinguish perspective from deliberate dishonesty.
Identify voices represented and absent within a source set.
Corroborate a factual claim by comparing it with evidence from another source.
Distinguish independent corroboration from repetition by sources that depend on the same earlier account.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Construct a historical paragraph containing a claim, cited evidence, explanation, and qualification.
Construct a short account using at least three different source types.
Explain why a source may be useful for one question but limited for another.
Identify questions of reliability, bias, and deeper motive that require Grade 7 analysis.

The Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, and Trans-Saharan Trade

28 competencies

Define a historical trade network as connected routes, places, producers, merchants, transporters, institutions, and consumers.
Distinguish a trade route from a complete trade network.
Explain how caravan animals, ships, ports, roads, inns, warehouses, marketplaces, guides, maps, credit, partnerships, currencies, and written contracts supported trade.
Explain how monsoon winds structured seasonal Indian Ocean travel.
Explain how oasis towns, camel caravans, pasture, guides, and political protection supported desert trade.
Trace silk, spices, textiles, ceramics, paper, horses, metals, salt, gold, ivory, books, timber, grain, and other goods through historical networks.
Distinguish luxury goods from high-volume or essential goods while recognizing overlap.
Explain how merchant partnerships, credit arrangements, currency exchange, and written orders reduced some commercial risks.
Explain that enslaved people were traded and exploited within several historical regions and systems.
Distinguish post-classical systems of enslavement from the later racialized transatlantic slave trade.
Compare benefits, burdens, dependencies, and risks experienced by different participants in a trade network.
Analyze how political stability, war, piracy, banditry, environmental disruption, or disease affected historical exchange.
Construct a network map showing production, movement, taxation, exchange, and consumption.
Explain how a trade network connects environmental conditions, labor, production, transport, finance, political authority, and consumption.
Trace the movement of goods, technologies, religious ideas, artistic forms, mathematical knowledge, medical knowledge, stories, and languages through historical networks.
Explain how warfare, taxation, piracy, banditry, political fragmentation, environmental stress, or disease may disrupt exchange.
Explain how network connections may create wealth and opportunity for some participants while imposing labor, taxation, enslavement, displacement, or risk on others.
Compare the Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, and trans-Saharan networks by geography, transport, goods, participants, institutions, and cultural effects.
Distinguish direct exchange from relay trade in which goods pass through several intermediaries.
Explain how merchant, scholarly, religious, and migrant communities maintained connections across political borders.
Create a historical network model containing nodes, routes, flows, institutions, risks, and dependencies.
Evaluate a claim that a network benefited everyone equally and identify missing perspectives.
Describe port cities, caravan towns, capitals, pilgrimage centers, monasteries, frontier zones, and market cities as places of cultural interaction.
Identify merchants, sailors, pastoralists, pilgrims, scholars, soldiers, diplomats, enslaved people, craftspeople, and migrants as historical carriers of culture.
Explain that cultural exchange may result in adoption, adaptation, translation, resistance, coexistence, or selective borrowing.
Distinguish cultural exchange from complete cultural replacement.
Construct a historical culture-route profile using maps, objects, texts, architecture, and language evidence.
Explain how Islam interacted with existing West African beliefs and political traditions.

Byzantium — The Eastern Roman Empire

22 competencies

Compare city-state, kingdom, empire, caliphate, dynasty, manor, commune, and confederation as historical political forms.
Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Explain the purpose and historical importance of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis.
Explain that written law may differ from actual enforcement and everyday practice.
Describe the economies of Byzantine, Islamic, medieval European, Tang–Song Chinese, West African, Aztec, and Inca societies.
Compare benefits, burdens, dependencies, and risks experienced by different participants in a trade network.
Explain how deserts, steppes, seas, monsoon zones, river valleys, mountain passes, tropical lowlands, and highlands shaped historical routes.
Explain how political stability and infrastructure may encourage exchange.
Explain how warfare, taxation, piracy, banditry, political fragmentation, environmental stress, or disease may disrupt exchange.
Explain that cultural identity may be layered and may change according to context.
Explain that cultural exchange may result in adoption, adaptation, translation, resistance, coexistence, or selective borrowing.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Identify how social role, religion, political position, region, occupation, gender, or relationship to an event may shape perspective.
Identify voices represented and absent within a source set.
Corroborate a factual claim by comparing it with evidence from another source.
Identify agreement, disagreement, different emphasis, and different perspective across accounts.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Describe Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Latin Christianity within their historical institutional contexts.
Explain the historical roles of bishops, patriarchs, popes, monasteries, clergy, councils, and missionaries.
Compare the historical influence of religions descriptively without ranking their truth or value.
Distinguish official religious institutions from household, local, minority, or nonconforming practices.
Use religious texts, buildings, inscriptions, art, law, and material evidence cautiously.

The Rise and Expansion of Islam

22 competencies

Explain how a central government may govern through provincial officials, local rulers, tax collectors, judges, military officers, religious institutions, and customary authorities.
Compare hereditary, appointed, elected, military, religious, and examination-based routes into public authority.
Explain that political and religious authority may be combined, separate, cooperative, or in conflict.
Compare the legal status of people by social rank, religion, gender, occupation, citizenship, freedom, or regional membership in selected historical societies.
Compare the physical and population geography of the Mediterranean, Southwest Asia and North Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, the Sahel, Mesoamerica, and the Andes.
Explain how network connections may create wealth and opportunity for some participants while imposing labor, taxation, enslavement, displacement, or risk on others.
Explain cultural identity as a person’s or community’s connection to shared language, religion, region, occupation, ancestry, customs, political membership, or historical experience.
Explain that cultural exchange may result in adoption, adaptation, translation, resistance, coexistence, or selective borrowing.
Explain how multilingual and multi-religious communities functioned within selected post-classical cities and empires.
Explain how political power or unequal social status can shape cultural exchange.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Identify agreement, disagreement, different emphasis, and different perspective across accounts.
Explain how translation may affect the wording and interpretation of a source.
Distinguish direct source evidence, inference, interpretation, and unsupported claim.
State where evidence remains insufficient or where reasonable interpretations differ.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Describe the religious landscape of Arabia before Islam at an introductory level.
Describe Muhammad’s historical role in the origins of Islam.
Describe the Qur’an as Islam’s sacred text and distinguish it from later biographies, legal works, and collections of reports.
Describe the Five Pillars as widespread foundational practices in Islam while recognizing diversity of interpretation and practice.
Explain the historical origins of the Sunni–Shia division at a basic level.
Distinguish historical study of religion from devotional participation.

The Islamic Caliphates and the Golden Age

25 competencies

Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Describe Islamic jurisprudence as a historically developing tradition drawing on the Qur’an, reports about Muhammad, legal reasoning, and scholarly interpretation.
Explain how caravan animals, ships, ports, roads, inns, warehouses, marketplaces, guides, maps, credit, partnerships, currencies, and written contracts supported trade.
Explain how merchant partnerships, credit arrangements, currency exchange, and written orders reduced some commercial risks.
Describe the economies of Byzantine, Islamic, medieval European, Tang–Song Chinese, West African, Aztec, and Inca societies.
Explain how a trade network connects environmental conditions, labor, production, transport, finance, political authority, and consumption.
Trace the movement of goods, technologies, religious ideas, artistic forms, mathematical knowledge, medical knowledge, stories, and languages through historical networks.
Evaluate a claim that a network benefited everyone equally and identify missing perspectives.
Explain that cultural identity may be layered and may change according to context.
Explain how trade routes can carry languages, artistic styles, religious ideas, technologies, foods, clothing, stories, and social practices.
Explain how multilingual and multi-religious communities functioned within selected post-classical cities and empires.
Compare the cultural identities of two communities connected by trade or political rule.
Use evidence to identify continuity and change in a regional culture across the post-classical period.
Avoid treating medieval or post-classical regional labels as identical to modern national or ethnic identities.
Corroborate a factual claim by comparing it with evidence from another source.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Identify agreement, disagreement, different emphasis, and different perspective across accounts.
Explain how translation may affect the wording and interpretation of a source.
Construct a historical paragraph containing a claim, cited evidence, explanation, and qualification.
Construct a short account using at least three different source types.
Explain that religions spread through several processes, including migration, trade, state support, conquest, missionary activity, scholarship, pilgrimage, intermarriage, and local adoption.
Explain that religious spread usually involves translation, adaptation, debate, and regional variation.
Explain how Islamic institutions influenced law, education, charity, art, architecture, government, scholarship, and trade.
Distinguish official religious institutions from household, local, minority, or nonconforming practices.
Use religious texts, buildings, inscriptions, art, law, and material evidence cautiously.

Medieval Europe — Kingdoms, Church, Towns, and Change

19 competencies

Compare city-state, kingdom, empire, caliphate, dynasty, manor, commune, and confederation as historical political forms.
Explain the relationship between central authority and local autonomy in a historical state.
Explain that political and religious authority may be combined, separate, cooperative, or in conflict.
Describe canon law, royal law, local custom, manorial obligation, and urban privilege as overlapping medieval European legal traditions.
Explain that written law may differ from actual enforcement and everyday practice.
Compare the legal status of people by social rank, religion, gender, occupation, citizenship, freedom, or regional membership in selected historical societies.
Describe the economies of Byzantine, Islamic, medieval European, Tang–Song Chinese, West African, Aztec, and Inca societies.
Explain how agriculture, taxation, labor obligations, craft specialization, markets, and military supply supported post-classical states.
Analyze how political stability, war, piracy, banditry, environmental disruption, or disease affected historical exchange.
Explain how warfare, taxation, piracy, banditry, political fragmentation, environmental stress, or disease may disrupt exchange.
Describe port cities, caravan towns, capitals, pilgrimage centers, monasteries, frontier zones, and market cities as places of cultural interaction.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Identify voices represented and absent within a source set.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Identify agreement, disagreement, different emphasis, and different perspective across accounts.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Explain why a source may be useful for one question but limited for another.
Describe Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Latin Christianity within their historical institutional contexts.
Explain the historical roles of bishops, patriarchs, popes, monasteries, clergy, councils, and missionaries.

Tang and Song China — Empire, Economy, and Innovation

19 competencies

Explain the relationship between central authority and local autonomy in a historical state.
Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Compare hereditary, appointed, elected, military, religious, and examination-based routes into public authority.
Explain that written law may differ from actual enforcement and everyday practice.
Describe the economies of Byzantine, Islamic, medieval European, Tang–Song Chinese, West African, Aztec, and Inca societies.
Explain how agriculture, taxation, labor obligations, craft specialization, markets, and military supply supported post-classical states.
Explain how population centers and routes may change after war, political change, environmental stress, commercial growth, or technological development.
Trace the movement of goods, technologies, religious ideas, artistic forms, mathematical knowledge, medical knowledge, stories, and languages through historical networks.
Explain how political stability and infrastructure may encourage exchange.
Explain how network connections may create wealth and opportunity for some participants while imposing labor, taxation, enslavement, displacement, or risk on others.
Explain how trade routes can carry languages, artistic styles, religious ideas, technologies, foods, clothing, stories, and social practices.
Explain how multilingual and multi-religious communities functioned within selected post-classical cities and empires.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Explain why a source may be useful for one question but limited for another.
Explain that religions spread through several processes, including migration, trade, state support, conquest, missionary activity, scholarship, pilgrimage, intermarriage, and local adoption.
Explain that religious spread usually involves translation, adaptation, debate, and regional variation.
Explain how Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism influenced Tang and Song institutions and culture.

West African Empires — Ghana, Mali, and Songhai

23 competencies

Explain how a central government may govern through provincial officials, local rulers, tax collectors, judges, military officers, religious institutions, and customary authorities.
Explain the relationship between central authority and local autonomy in a historical state.
Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Explain that political and religious authority may be combined, separate, cooperative, or in conflict.
Explain how oasis towns, camel caravans, pasture, guides, and political protection supported desert trade.
Explain how taxes, tolls, tribute, market fees, monopolies, and state protection affected trade.
Explain how agriculture, taxation, labor obligations, craft specialization, markets, and military supply supported post-classical states.
Explain that enslaved people were traded and exploited within several historical regions and systems.
Distinguish post-classical systems of enslavement from the later racialized transatlantic slave trade.
Compare the physical and population geography of the Mediterranean, Southwest Asia and North Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, the Sahel, Mesoamerica, and the Andes.
Describe port cities, caravan towns, capitals, pilgrimage centers, monasteries, frontier zones, and market cities as places of cultural interaction.
Explain how multilingual and multi-religious communities functioned within selected post-classical cities and empires.
Explain perspective as the position, experience, knowledge, and interests from which a source was created.
Distinguish perspective from deliberate dishonesty.
Identify voices represented and absent within a source set.
Corroborate a factual claim by comparing it with evidence from another source.
Distinguish independent corroboration from repetition by sources that depend on the same earlier account.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Identify agreement, disagreement, different emphasis, and different perspective across accounts.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Explain why a source may be useful for one question but limited for another.
Explain that religions spread through several processes, including migration, trade, state support, conquest, missionary activity, scholarship, pilgrimage, intermarriage, and local adoption.
Explain how Islam interacted with existing West African beliefs and political traditions.

The Aztec and Inca Empires

21 competencies

Explain how a central government may govern through provincial officials, local rulers, tax collectors, judges, military officers, religious institutions, and customary authorities.
Explain the relationship between central authority and local autonomy in a historical state.
Explain bureaucracy as a system of appointed officials and records used to administer government.
Compare the legal status of people by social rank, religion, gender, occupation, citizenship, freedom, or regional membership in selected historical societies.
Describe the economies of Byzantine, Islamic, medieval European, Tang–Song Chinese, West African, Aztec, and Inca societies.
Explain how agriculture, taxation, labor obligations, craft specialization, markets, and military supply supported post-classical states.
Explain that enslaved people were traded and exploited within several historical regions and systems.
Explain human–environment interaction as a two-way relationship in which environments influence people and people modify environments.
Describe irrigation, terracing, drainage, reservoirs, canals, roads, ports, pasture management, forest clearance, and urban construction as historical environmental modifications.
Compare the physical and population geography of the Mediterranean, Southwest Asia and North Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, the Sahel, Mesoamerica, and the Andes.
Explain how deserts, steppes, seas, monsoon zones, river valleys, mountain passes, tropical lowlands, and highlands shaped historical routes.
Construct a regional geographic profile that connects physical setting, population, settlement, work, and historical exchange.
Explain how political stability and infrastructure may encourage exchange.
Explain how cities and states depended on distant food, raw materials, horses, metals, salt, gold, timber, books, or luxury goods.
Compare written evidence with archaeology, architecture, coins, maps, art, objects, and environmental evidence.
Explain how translation may affect the wording and interpretation of a source.
Construct a short account using at least three different source types.
State where evidence remains insufficient or where reasonable interpretations differ.
Use chronological sequence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparison within a source-supported account.
Describe Aztec and Inca religious institutions, sacred landscapes, rulers, rituals, deities, ancestors, and calendars.
Distinguish official religious institutions from household, local, minority, or nonconforming practices.