Social Studies lesson plans

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on saying why a question is worth asking, rather than only answering it.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on naming which part of social studies a question belongs to.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on naming the facts a small question needs before it can be answered.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on seeing how a small question helps answer a bigger one.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on choosing the source that would answer a question.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on the roles and responsibilities of the adults who run a school.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on the idea that ordinary people, not only leaders, keep a community working.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on what rules are for, at school and outside it.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on what a government is, using the things the town looks after.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on how a group shares out a task so it actually gets finished.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on the civic virtues a class needs: fairness, honesty, patience and respect.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on fairness and equality as things a group needs to work.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on the agreed rules for a class discussion, and on actually listening.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on noticing that somebody else can think something different and still be reasonable.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on how a class makes a decision together, and why the order matters.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on how rules work in a classroom and a school, and who they apply to.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on how people have improved the places they share, and how a class could.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on scarcity: because there is never enough of everything, people have to choose.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on the idea that every choice costs you the thing you did not choose.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on the skills and knowledge somebody needs to make a particular thing.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on what the local community makes and what arrives from somewhere else.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on reading prices in a store and working out what you can afford.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on where money comes from: people are paid for the work they do.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on the costs of making something: the materials, the tools and the time.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on what a bank does: it keeps money safe until somebody needs it.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on saving: keeping money back now so you can buy something bigger later.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on the goods and services a town provides, and how they differ from what a store sells.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on the difference between the tools a worker uses and the skills they carry.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on why people in one country buy and sell with people in another.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on goods that arrive from abroad and goods that are made here and sent away.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on making a simple map of a familiar place, seen from above.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on describing a place from a photograph or a map.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on what a globe shows, what a map shows, and when to use each.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on how weather and climate change the way people live in a place.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on how what people do changes the place they live in.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on the features of a place, and which were made by nature and which by people.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on why and how people, goods and ideas move from place to place.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on how a community uses both nearby and distant places to get what it needs.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on how the land in a place shapes the work people do there.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on how different parts of the world look and feel different.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on how the things you use connect you to places far away.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on how a flood, a storm or a fire affects the people living through it.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on putting several events into the order they happened.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on comparing how people lived in the past with how we live today.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on asking good questions about the people behind a change.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on comparing how people saw things in the past with how we see them now.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on comparing two accounts of the same event and working out why they differ.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on the different kinds of thing that can tell you about the past.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on using a source to find something out about the past.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on working out who made a source, when, and where, from the source itself.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on generating a question about a source and the event it comes from.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on suggesting possible reasons for something that happened in the past.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on choosing between two possible reasons and saying why one is likelier.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on gathering what you need from one or two sources, chosen for a reason.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on telling a fact you could check from an opinion somebody holds.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on making an argument: saying what you think and giving a reason.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on explaining how something works, in the right order and with the details that matter.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on sharing what you found out, in speech, in writing or on a screen.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on asking and answering questions about somebody's argument.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on asking a question that fills the gap in somebody's explanation.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on naming problems close to home and further away, and who is working on them.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on naming ways to take action on a problem near you or far away.

A 40-minute Kindergarten lesson on using listening, agreeing and voting to decide what the class will do.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on saying why a question about the neighborhood is worth asking.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on working out which part of social studies a neighborhood question belongs to.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on naming the facts a neighborhood question needs before it can be answered.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on seeing how small questions about the street add up to a big one.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on choosing which neighborhood source would answer a question.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on the roles and responsibilities of the people who keep a neighborhood running.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on how neighbors who hold no office keep a street working.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on why different places have different rules, and what each rule is for.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on what a council is and which local things it looks after.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on how a street organizes itself to get something done.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on civic virtues away from school, where nobody in charge is watching.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on fairness when the group is a whole street rather than a class.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on discussion rules in a meeting of people who do not all know each other.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on why neighbors can want opposite things and both be reasonable.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on how a group of neighbors makes a decision that binds everybody.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on what local rules make possible, and who they apply to.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on how people have improved streets like theirs, and how a class could ask.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on scarcity when the shopping is for a household rather than for you.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on the cost of a choice when the choice affects other people too.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on the skills behind the jobs done on the street, and how they are learned.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on what the local area produces and what has to be brought in.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on reading prices, comparing them and working out what a basket costs.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on how local workers earn, and who actually pays them.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on what a storekeeper spends before anything is sold.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on what a bank does for the people and stores in a neighborhood.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on saving as a group, using the street's fund for new trees.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on which local services the council provides and how they are paid for.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on the tools and skills behind local work, and which is harder to replace.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on why the local store stocks goods that could never be grown here.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on goods arriving from abroad and goods leaving for it.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on drawing a map of a street from memory, with a key.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on working out what kind of place a photograph shows and what is happening in it.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on choosing between a local map and a globe, and reading a key.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on how weather changes what happens on a street, beyond what people wear.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on the changes people have made to the local street and who gained by them.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on which local features are natural, which are built, and which are both.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on the people, goods and ideas that pass through a neighborhood every day.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on how a neighborhood uses both nearby and distant places to meet daily needs.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on how the land around a town decided what work was done in it.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on world regions and how they differ from the one the class lives in.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on tracing everyday things back to the distant places and people they came from.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on how a local flood or storm affects a street, and how people prepare.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on sequencing events that happen across a week rather than a morning.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on comparing the street fifty years ago with the street today, using a real source.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on asking answerable questions about the people who changed the street.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on comparing how people on this street saw things then with how we see them now.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on comparing two accounts of the same local event and working out why they differ.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on the kinds of source that survive about a local street.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on getting information out of a local source and noticing what it leaves out.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on working out a source's maker, date and place from the source itself.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on generating questions a particular local source could help answer.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on suggesting possible reasons for changes to the local street.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on choosing between explanations for a local change and giving evidence.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on gathering information from one or two real neighborhood sources.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on telling fact from opinion in real neighborhood notices and posters.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on making an argument about a real local question, with a reason and evidence.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on explaining a real neighborhood process in order, with nothing missing.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on sharing a local finding with somebody outside the classroom.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on asking about somebody's reason politely when you disagree with them.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on locating the missing step in an explanation and asking about it precisely.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on naming local and distant problems and who is already working on them.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on planning a real action on a local problem, including who must agree.

A 40-minute Grade 1 lesson on using listening, agreement and voting to decide on a real local action.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on judging which questions about the town are worth the effort of answering.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on identifying which social studies ideas a town question draws on.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on naming exactly which facts would settle a question, and which are missing.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on building a set of small questions that together answer a big one.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on choosing among town records, including when none of them will do.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on which town roles hold which powers, and where each one stops.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the townspeople with no office who nevertheless shape what happens.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on why two town institutions need different rules and what each protects.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on what a town council is, how it is bound by its own records, and what it does not run.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the stages a town goes through to get something built or mended.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on civic virtues where a whole town can see, and where the cost is real.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on fairness when a decision helps one part of town at another's expense.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the rules that let a formal meeting reach a decision everybody can accept.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on why townspeople disagree about spending, and what each side is protecting.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the formal steps of a council decision and why each one exists.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on how town rules create trust between people who do not know each other.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on how towns have been improved over time, and what makes a proposal succeed.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on scarcity when a town fund cannot cover everything the town needs.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the cost of a public choice, including to people who did not choose it.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the specialist skills a town relies on and what happens when one is lost.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on what a town produced, what it always imported, and how that changed.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on comparing prices across stalls and working out why they differ.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on how townspeople earn and how public and private wages differ.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on everything a town business or service must pay for before it earns anything.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on what a bank does and how it differs from the town's own fund.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on why a town saves, and the choice between saving and borrowing.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on which services a town provides collectively and why those and not others.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the town's physical assets and its accumulated skills, and which is harder to rebuild.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on why a town trades with places near and far, and what it depends on.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the goods that flowed into and out of the town and how the balance changed.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on making a town map with a key and a scale, starting from the river.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on working out a town's character and history from an image.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on choosing between three scales of map and reading a scale bar.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on how weather and climate reach every part of a town's life.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the large changes a town has made to its own landscape.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the town's natural and built features and how the two interact.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the flows of people, goods and information a town depends on.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the near and distant resources a town needs to function.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on how the landscape decided where the town grew and what it did.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on the regions around the town and further off, and why they differ.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on how a town's ordinary purchases connect it to people across the world.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on how one flood reached every part of a town, and what could prevent it.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on sequencing town events across decades using dated sources.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on comparing the town of the census with the town today.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on asking questions about the choices people in the town's past faced.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on things that were ordinary in the town's past and are unacceptable now.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on comparing a newspaper report and a school log about the same flood.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on which kinds of record survive from a town's past, and which never do.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on getting evidence out of an official record and noticing its limits.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on establishing who made a document, when, and for whom.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on generating questions a record could answer and planning where to go next.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on generating and testing possible reasons for changes in the town's past.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on judging which of two explanations the town's evidence supports better.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on gathering evidence from town records and combining two of them.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on separating fact from judgment inside a real town document.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on building an argument about a real town decision, with evidence cited.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on explaining a town process fully, in order, to somebody outside it.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on presenting a town finding to a real audience with its source attached.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on questioning an argument's evidence rather than its conclusion.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on locating the gap in an explanation and asking a question that closes it.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on seeing that a local problem is often a version of a wider one.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on planning a town action with a cost, an authorizer and a way to tell if it worked.

A 40-minute Grade 2 lesson on reaching a town decision that binds people who were not in the room.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on explaining why a question about the past matters to people other than the asker.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on finding the idea inside a question that people genuinely interpret differently.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on working out what evidence a supporting question would actually need.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how a supporting question earns its place by helping answer a compelling one.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on choosing sources that let a disagreement be heard rather than settled in advance.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on which body holds which power, from Parliament down to the parish.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how a democracy depends on people actually taking part in it.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on tracing a rule back to the problem it was written to solve.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how one rule creates a duty for somebody and protects a freedom for somebody else.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how a system of government is structured across national and county levels.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on the benefits and the real difficulties of working together on a public problem.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on applying civic virtues to real situations where somebody could behave badly.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on naming the democratic principle that a particular practice puts into effect.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on the sequence a group works through before it decides anything.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on tracing a point of view back to the experience that produced it.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on telling a decision that needs a vote from one that only needs a rule applied.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how a law reshapes a society and how people set out to reshape the law.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on the route from a public problem to a policy that is funded and applied.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson comparing how people worked for change in the 1840s with how they do it today.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on weighing what a choice gains against what it costs the person making it.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on the incentives that push people toward or away from a decision.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on the three kinds of resource it takes to produce anything.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on why people and businesses specialize and then depend on trade.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on the three jobs money does that direct exchange cannot manage.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how training and schooling change what a person can produce and earn.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how the chance of profit changes what sellers choose to do.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on costs and benefits that land on people who were never part of the exchange.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on the institutions besides banks that hold, lend and pool people's money.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on what an interest rate is and why lenders charge one.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on what inflation, deflation and unemployment actually describe.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on where a council and a country get the money for what they provide.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on the two ways of producing more: improved capital goods and improved skills.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how trade between countries turns into dependence on both sides.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on why one trading change makes some groups better off and others worse.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on the four things a map needs before another person can use it.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on explaining what a place is like from where it is.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on choosing a map scale that fits the question being asked.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how what a community values shows up in what it builds.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how one place changes in both its land and its way of life over time.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on why people are spread unevenly across a county.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how a place's features decide what people, goods and news pass through it.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how the resources under and around a place decide what settles there.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how a flood, a fire or a closure changes where people live.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on why the natural world is so different from one part of the globe to another.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how the pattern of work in a place shifts as it connects to other places.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how an event in one place reaches people who live nowhere near it.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on using a timeline to compare two things that were happening at the same time.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson comparing daily life in the valley in the 1840s with daily life now.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on generating good questions about the people and groups who shaped a change.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on why people living through the same event described it so differently.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how the moment a source was written shaped what its author could see.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on how who made a source, and why, shows in what the source says.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on what different kinds of historical source are actually good for.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on comparing what two sources say about the same past, including where they clash.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on working out a source's intended audience and purpose from the source itself.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on asking questions about how several sources relate to one another and to an event.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on judging how useful a source is for one particular question rather than in general.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on separating what caused a change from what followed it.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on turning evidence from records into a claim about what happened.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on finding the central claim inside a modern history of the valley.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on gathering from a source what a question actually needs and leaving the rest.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on using the difference between fact and opinion to judge how far a source can be trusted.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on pulling together evidence from several sources to answer one compelling question.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on writing a claim that answers the compelling question the evidence was gathered for.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on constructing an argument whose every claim is tied to a source.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on building an explanation with reasoning, correct order and real detail.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on presenting a finding to a reader who was never in the lesson.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on judging an argument by its reasoning rather than by whether you agree with it.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on judging an explanation by its order, its reasoning and its detail.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on choosing which social studies discipline a real problem belongs to.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on comparing ways of acting on a problem and predicting what each would produce.

A 45-minute Grade 3 lesson on using a fair, democratic procedure to decide and act on a real school problem.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on why a question about a region's past still matters to people who never lived there.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on locating the idea inside a question that two careful people would define differently.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on working out exactly what evidence a supporting question needs before it can be answered.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on building a set of supporting questions that between them answer a compelling one.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on assembling a set of sources that lets a disagreement be heard rather than decided in advance.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on which body held which power, including the ones nobody elected.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on what a democracy loses when the people it affects do not take part in it.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on tracing a rule back to the problem somebody wrote it to solve.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on naming both sides of a rule: the duty it imposes and the freedom it protects.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how power divides between national government, local boards and private companies.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on the benefits and the real limits of acting together, using a dispute with a nine-day fund.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on applying civic virtues where the wrong would be invisible to everybody outside.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on naming the democratic principle a particular practice puts into effect.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on the sequence a body works through between a proposal and a recorded decision.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on tracing a person's position back to what they stood to gain or lose.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on telling a decision that needs a vote from one that only needs a rule applied.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how laws reshaped children's lives, and how people set out to make those laws.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on why a policy has to measure a problem before it can propose anything.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson comparing how people pressed for change in the 1890s with how they do it today.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on weighing what a choice gains against everything it costs, including what is given up.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on identifying incentives and predicting what behavior each one produces.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on the three kinds of resource behind everything the region produced.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on why a whole district specializes, and what that leaves it exposed to.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on what money makes possible that direct exchange cannot, including adding things up.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how training changes what somebody can produce, and therefore what they can earn.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how the chance of profit moved sellers, workers and whole districts.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on costs and benefits that fall on people who were never part of the exchange.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on the institutions that pooled risk and moved money before the welfare state.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on what an interest rate is, in both directions, and why rates differ between borrowers.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on what inflation, deflation and unemployment each describe, and why they differ.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on the different ways public work was paid for, and who paid each of them.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on the two routes to producing more: better capital goods and better skills.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how a region that imports its food and its raw cotton comes to depend on other countries.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on why one trading change fills two ledgers: a gaining group and a losing one.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on making a map that shows change in numbers rather than only where things are.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on explaining four very different districts from the ground each one sits on.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on choosing a map scale that fits the question, and saying what it hides.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on reading a district's values off what its people built and kept.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how four districts in one region changed in completely different directions.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on explaining an uneven population from work, land and route rather than from preference.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how a region's features decide what people, goods and news pass through it.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how a natural resource creates work, and the work creates a settlement.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how disasters, slow and sudden, change where people live and where they go.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on the causes that make one world region hot and wet and another cold or dry.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how the work done in a place shifts as its connections to other places change.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on tracing the chain by which an event on another continent reaches a household here.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on placing two strands on one timeline to see what was happening at once.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson comparing life in the 1890s with life today, anchored in records rather than impressions.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on generating questions about the people the records name, and the groups they only count.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on why two documents from the same month describe the same dispute so differently.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how the moment a source was written limited what its author could possibly know.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on how the maker of a record shows in what the record counts and what it ignores.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on what each kind of record is good at, and what each cannot show.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on comparing sources that disagree by arithmetic rather than by tone.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on inferring who a record was written for from what it takes for granted.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on asking questions that only make sense when several sources are on the table.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on judging a source's usefulness for one named topic rather than in general.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on separating what caused a region's transformation from what followed it.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on turning figures from several records into a claim somebody could argue with.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on summarizing a disputed history's central claim and testing it against the records.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on taking from a record only the figures the question needs, and recording where they came from.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on using the fact-opinion distinction to judge how far a source can be trusted.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on assembling evidence from several records to answer one compelling question.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on writing a claim that answers the compelling question directly and survives an objection.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on constructing an argument in which every claim is tied to a named source.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on building an explanation with the steps in order and the reasoning between them.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on presenting a finding so that it stands alone for a reader who was never in the lesson.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on judging an argument by its reasoning, including arguments you happen to agree with.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on judging an explanation by its order, its reasoning and the figures it uses.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on choosing which discipline a question about a real problem belongs to.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on comparing strategies for acting on a problem and predicting what each produces.

A 50-minute Grade 4 lesson on running a real school decision through a procedure that records who objected and why.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on why a question about one government's failure still matters to people now.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on finding the contested idea when two causes are both real and cannot be separated.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on identifying the comparison a supporting question needs, and when it does not exist.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on building a set of supporting questions and auditing it for what it leaves out.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on assembling a source set that covers a plan, its objections and what actually happened.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on which body does what in a national program, and who answers for each part.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how a democracy depends on participation, and on who gets to take part at all.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on tracing a parliamentary or reporting procedure back to the failure it prevents.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on rules that oblige somebody to publish, and the freedom to judge that they protect.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on sorting national, local and private power, and noticing how much sits outside government.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on what governments and groups gain by binding themselves, and what they surrender.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on civic virtue where telling the truth carries a real cost to the person telling it.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on matching a democratic principle to the specific practice that puts it into effect.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on the sequence from a draft policy to a counted division, and what each stage supplies.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on tracing a stated position back to the constituency, interest or experience behind it.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on telling a decision that needs a vote from one already settled by a published rule.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how housing law reshaped where a country lived, and how people made that law.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on a policy followed all the way through: measured, funded, missed and admitted.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson comparing how governments and campaigners reached the public then and now.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on weighing what a public decision gains against everything it costs and forgoes.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how a government uses incentives when it cannot use prices.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on the three kinds of resource a national building program depended on.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on why countries specialize, using an agreement whose terms a class can read.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how money makes unlike goods comparable, using a treaty that says "to the same value."

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how training changes what a country can produce, not just what a person can earn.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on what happens when a government deliberately overrides the profit motive.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on effects that fall on people who were never part of a public decision.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on the institutions that move money through an economy, including a government bond.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on what an interest rate is and what it does to a program funded by borrowing.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on inflation, deflation and unemployment, and why they can occur together.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on the two ways a government pays for something, and how it chooses between them.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on the two routes to producing more, including a case where a method replaced a trade.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how a trade agreement creates dependence in both directions at once.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on why every decision in a national program produced a gaining and a losing group.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on mapping rates rather than totals, and marking honestly what you do not know.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how a place's condition and situation decide what can be built there.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on choosing between street, national and world scales for a single enquiry.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on reading a country's values off what it chose to rebuild and how.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how a bombed district changed, stage by stage, and what drove each stage.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on why people crowd into damaged cities and why some leave for new estates.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how a country's features decide what moves through it, including information.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how the resources under a country decided where its building materials came from.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how a country decides what to rebuild after a catastrophe, and who waits.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on the causes behind the world's climate belts, including the awkward exceptions.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how the work a country does changes when its purpose and connections change.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on tracing a supply chain from an event on another continent to a stalled building site.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on placing what was promised and what was delivered on a single timeline.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson comparing how a country handled a housing crisis then and how it does now.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on generating answerable questions about people at every level of one program.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on why people living through one program described it in four incompatible ways.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how the moment a source was written set the limit on what its author could know.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on how a maker's purpose shows in a source, including one that damages its own author.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on what each kind of twentieth-century source is good for and what it cannot show.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on comparing what was intended with what happened, and knowing what the gap proves.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on inferring a source's audience from what it assumes its reader already accepts.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on asking questions that only exist once several sources are on the table together.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on judging usefulness by topic, with the sharpest case being a plan used as an outcome.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on separating causes from effects when two causes acted at once.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on turning evidence from several public records into a claim that can be tested.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on summarizing a secondary work whose central claim is about causation and is disputed.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on gathering only what the question needs from documents written for other purposes.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on the difference between a claim that can be checked and one that has been.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on assembling evidence from independently made sources for one compelling question.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on writing a claim that answers the compelling question and states its own limits.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on constructing an argument in which every claim is anchored to a named source.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on building an explanation whose every step can be checked against a source.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on presenting a finding so it survives being read by somebody who was not there.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on judging arguments by whether the reason actually gets you to the claim.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on judging explanations by order, reasoning, sourcing and restraint with detail.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on identifying which discipline a question about a real public problem belongs to.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on comparing ways of acting on a public problem and predicting what each produces.

A 55-minute Grade 5 lesson on running a decision so that somebody else can hold it to account afterward.