Secondary Social Studies at NNPS
Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions
Enduring Understanding: Social scientists examine cause and effect to see relationships between people, places, ideas, and events.
- Why are social scientists concerned about cause and effect?
- How can examining cause and effect help us understand relationships between people, places, ideas, and events?
- To what extent can understanding cause and effect help us solve problems and make decisions?
- How does the study of history help us realize that ideas and actions of individuals and groups have consequences and shape events?
Enduring Understanding 2: Social scientists find the connections between events of the past and present to help understand our world.
- Why should we study the past?
- How can studying the past help us understand the present world and the future?
- How can past events shape present and future events?
- Why should we be concerned about future events?
- How can we study the past?
- To what extent can studying the past events help us predict future events?
- How can the study of history help us compare and contrast the relationship between the past and present?
Enduring Understanding 3: Social scientists analyze and recognize how people, places, and ideas change over time.
- Why should we understand how people, places, and ideas have changed over time?
- How can people, places, and ideas change over time?
- How have the actions, ideas, and values of people changed over time?
- How have the cultural and physical characteristics of places changed over time?
- How have the ideas of people changed over time?
- Is the world today a better place than the world of the past? Will our future world be better than today's world?
- How can technology help us recognize and analyze change over time?
- How can the study of history helps us connect continuity and change?
Enduring Understanding: Social scientists study and compare people, places, ideas, and events to make sense of our world.
- Why should we compare and contrast people, places, ideas, and events?
- Why should we recognize universal patterns that exist within our world?
- What tools can social scientists use to compare and contrast people, places, ideas, and events?
- How are people and places alike?
- How are people and places different?
- Are the people, places, ideas, and events in the world becoming more alike or more different over time?
- How can technology help us study and compare people, places, ideas, and events?
Enduring Understanding 5: Social scientists recognize and analyze multiple points of view to explain the ideas and actions of individuals and groups.
- Why should we recognize and analyze multiple points of view?
- Why should we care about the perspectives of others?
- How can looking at multiple points of view help us explain the ideas and actions of individuals and groups?
- How can examining viewpoints that are different from our own help us explain the actions of others?
- How can looking at different perspectives help us better understand ourselves?
- How can recognizing multiple points of view help promote tolerance and understanding of diversity?
- How can differing points of view affect relations between and within societies?
- How can the perspectives of a group affect their use of and impact on the environment?
- To what extent can examining multiple perspectives help us understand conflict and promote cooperation and/or conflict resolution?
Enduring Understanding 6: Social scientists analyze and interpret evidence to solve problems and make decisions.
- What evidence do social scientists collect?
- How can you determine if evidence is valid and reasonable?
- How can you use evidence to solve problems and make decisions?
- What types of problems are of concern for historians, geographers, civic leaders, economists?
- To what extent can studying evidence from the past help us prevent future problems and make decisions that will affect the future?
Enduring Understanding 7: Social scientists make inferences and generalizations about various types of information and draw conclusions from a variety of sources.
- Why are making inferences and generalizations and drawing conclusions important in understanding our world?
- How can making inferences about various types of information and drawing conclusions help us understand our world?
- How can we use various types of information to make inferences and generalizations about various types of information?
- How can we use a variety of sources to draw conclusions?
- Why should we use a variety of information and sources to make inferences and generalizations and to draw conclusions?
Enduring Understanding 8: Social scientists gather, classify, sequence, and interpret information and visual data in order to recognize how people, places, ideas, and events shape our world.
- Why do social scientists gather, classify, sequence, and interpret information and visual data?
- How do social scientists gather, classify, sequence, and interpret information and visual data?
- Why is visual data important for understanding people, places, ideas, and events that shape our world?
- To what extent does visual data help us to understand how people, places, ideas, and events shape our world?
- What types of information and visual data do social scientists gather, classify, sequence, and interpret?
- To what extent is visual data more powerful in helping us understand the world than other types of information?
- How can we use technology to gather, classify, sequence, and interpret information and visual data?
- To what extent can the study of history help us develop chronological thinking?
Enduring Understanding 9: Social scientists recognize and analyze spatial relationships in order to see the relationship between and among people and places.
- What are spatial relationships?
- Why should we be able to recognize and analyze spatial relationships?
- How can recognizing spatial relationships help us to see the relationship between and among people and places?
- To what extent do spatial relationships influence the relationship between and among people and places?
- How do spatial relationships change over time?
