Curriculum

=Sixth Grade Humanities Curriculum= Social Studies at Crosswinds centers around the International Baccalaureate Program’s Humanities curriculum. In the IB Middle Years Program, humanities aims to encourage students to respect and understand the world around them, and to provide a skills base to facilitate further study. This is achieved through the study of individuals, societies, and environments in a wide context: historical, contemporary, geographical, political, social, economic, religious, technological and cultural.

In sixth grade, Humanities focuses on Minnesota History. We will discover unique facts about our beautiful state while studying its geography and agriculture, its creation, and the role it has played throughout American history. Along our journey, we will meet significant Minnesotans that have made our state…and our nation…what it is today.

**MN History Topics of Study:**
 * **Quarter 1: The Historian's Tools**
 * History as a story with multiple perspectives: Does it matter who tells the story?
 * The historian’s tools: Timelines, Secondary Sources, and Primary Sources
 * Minnesota Geography and Geological Features: Why does Minnesota look like this?
 * **Quarter 2: Where does Minnesota (and us as its inhabitants) get its roots?**
 * Minnesota’s “first” inhabitants
 * American Indian studies: Focus on the Dakota and the Ojibwa nations
 * The Fur Trade
 * **Quarter 3: What role has Minnesota played throughout American history?**
 * The Civil War
 * The Dakota War
 * Life in early Minnesota
 * **Quarter 4: The “Mill City” and industrialization of Minnesota**
 * Mill City and researching the //Mill City Museum// of Minneapolis
 * Prospering Minnesota & early 20th century immigration
 * Late 20th Century Immigration and the shaping of Modern Minnesota.

**Classroom Resources:**
 * Textbook: //Northern Lights: The Stories of Minnesota’s Past//
 * //Weird Minnesota// book and //It Happened in Minnesota//
 * Primary Sources: //Northern Lights: Going to the Sources//
 * Movies and pictures (especially PBS specials)
 * Websites that take us on “virtual tours” of important Minnesotan places
 * Simulations (activities and skits) to help us understand history in Minnesota

**Assignments**//:// All assignments will be started in, and often completed, in class. If you do not use your time wisely, YOU WILL HAVE TO TAKE IT HOME. **By the second semester, you can expect homework once a week. This homework should not take longer than 30 minutes-1 hour.**

**Assignments will include:** **//Grading//**//: Final grades will be assigned according to the Crosswinds rubric//
 * Daily warm-up responses
 * Written responses/connections to films we see, articles we read, or activities we do
 * Short research projects
 * Reading articles/ the textbook and completing worksheets
 * Geography Assignments
 * Quizzes