Colorado Academic Standards Online

Supportive Teaching Practices/Adults May:

1. Ask preschoolers to recall events from earlier in the day or from the day before.
2. Provide scaffolding to assist preschoolers to recall prior learning and events from classroom, school, home, and community events.
3. Ask children to identify future plans for center time, bedtime, playdates, etc.
4. Post a visual classroom schedule at eye level.
5. Post a photo-based visual timeline of how preschoolers and their classroom and families change over time. For example: updating the classroom All About Me book.
6. Use and model time-based directions. For example: First, then, beginning/middle/end.
7. Use, model, and tell time-based personal stories and have preschoolers share stories.

Examples of Learning/Children May:

1. Tell stories of past events.
2. Describe how they have grown.
3. Participate in creating a memory book to identify similarities and change over time.
4. Discuss possible past, present, and future changes affecting families such as a new sibling, moving, marriage, adoption, etc.
5. Use a visual classroom schedule, such as the Schedule Helper, to anticipate a change in schedule.
6. Select examples from pictures that illustrate beginning, middle, and end from a familiar story or past, present, and future relevant to their lives, such as their own family, classroom, etc.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Recognize and describe cause-and-effect relationships about the past (Civic Engagement).
2. Demonstrate curiosity about the past (Creativity and Innovation).

Inquiry Questions:

1. What is history?
2. What do primary sources tell me about the past?
3. How are the lives of people from the past both similar and different from our lives today?
4. What makes something a primary source?

Nature and Skills of History:

1. Historical thinkers ask and answer questions to guide investigations of people, places, and events in the past.
2. Historical thinkers ask and answer questions about the past.
3. Historical thinkers determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering questions about the past.
4. Historical thinkers communicate conclusions using print, oral, and/or digital technologies to share their ideas about the past with others.

Disciplinary, Information, and Media Literacy:

1. Generate questions and/or answers when presented with historical sources.
2. Interpret what is read through illustrations.
3. Listen to stories to gain information on a main idea.
4. Gather information and present orally.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Recognize and describe patterns in the sequence of events from the past (Critical Thinking and Analysis).

Inquiry Questions:

1. Why is it important to know the order of events?
2. How is your life and/or family different from other children and families of the past?
3. What happened yesterday and today, and what might happen tomorrow?
4. How have you grown and changed over time?

Nature and Skills of History:

1. Historians arrange events in the order of their occurrence.
2. Historians examine change and/or continuity over a period of time.

Disciplinary, Information, and Media Literacy:

1. Apply disciplinary concepts of change and continuity to the study of the past.
2. Gather information and present orally.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Recognize and describe cause-and-effect relationships and patterns from the past (Critical Thinking and Analysis).
2. Demonstrate curiosity about patterns from the past (Creativity and Innovation).

Inquiry Questions:

1. Why is it important to know the order of events?
2. How do we organize time?
3. What has happened in your life and what does that tell you about yourself?

Nature and Skills of History:

1. Historical thinkers examine change and/or continuity over a period of time.
2. Historical thinkers record events in sequential order to increase understanding, see relationships, understand cause and effect, and organize information.

Disciplinary, Information, and Media Literacy:

1. Apply disciplinary concepts of change and continuity to the study of the past.
2. Read and/or listen to historical fiction.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Compare one's attitudes and beliefs to others (Global and Cultural Awareness).
2. Identify and explain several cultural perspectives that constitute our diverse society (Global and Cultural Awareness).

Inquiry Questions:

1. How are different cultures represented in our community?
2. What is culture?
3. How do I learn about others’ perspectives and share my own?
4. How are cultures different from and similar to one another?

Nature and Skills of History:

1. Historical thinkers understand the importance of comparing and contrasting to identify patterns within and between cultures.
2. Historical thinkers use sources to make interpretations about cultural groups from the past.
3. Historical thinkers recognize symbols as cultural artifacts that can be interpreted to make meaning of both the past and present.
4. Historical thinkers compare multiple perspectives of people and groups of people in order to draw conclusions about both the past and the present.

Disciplinary, Information, and Media Literacy:

1. Apply the disciplinary concept of perspective-taking to the study of the past.
2. Identify self-perspective.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Identify key attributes of a variety of information products. For example: Books, newspapers, online or print articles, etc. (Media Literacy).
2. Demonstrate curiosity about events and people from the past using primary and secondary sources (Media Literacy).

Inquiry Questions:

1. How can two people understand the same event differently?
2. Why is it important to use more than one source for information?
3. How can putting events in order by time help describe the past?
4. What kinds of tools and sources do historical thinkers use to investigate the past?

Nature and Skills of History:

1. Historical thinkers gather firsthand accounts of history through a variety of sources, including differing accounts of the same event.
2. Historical thinkers use primary sources to investigate the past.

Disciplinary, Information, and Media Literacy:

1. Apply disciplinary concepts such as perspective to create accounts of the past.
2. Listen for main idea and sequence of events in a social studies text.
3. Analyze different texts (including experiments, simulations, video, or multimedia texts) to compare and contrast competing theories, points of view, and arguments in the discipline.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Recognize and describe cause-and-effect relationships and patterns in everyday experiences (Critical Thinking and Analysis).
2. Recognize and describe patterns within and between neighborhoods and communities (Critical Thinking and Analysis).
3. Investigate to make observations and draw conclusions about neighborhoods and communities (Critical Thinking and Analysis).

Inquiry Questions:

1. What are the cultural attributes of a neighborhood or community?
2. How can understanding the past impact our understanding of communities today?
3. How have people, events, and ideas from the past shaped the identity of communities and neighborhoods today?

Nature and Skills of History:

1. Historical thinkers investigate relationships between the past and present.
2. Historical thinkers organize findings in chronological order as one way to examine and describe the past.
3. Historical thinkers examine concepts of change, continuity, and causation in order to explain the past.

Disciplinary, Information, and Media Literacy:

1. Apply disciplinary concepts such as change, continuity, and causation to create accounts of neighborhoods and communities in the past.
2. Demonstrate positive social behaviors when using technology.
3. Begin to identify differing perspectives.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Articulate the most effective kinds of historical sources to access information needed for understanding historic events (Media Literacy).
2. Ask questions to develop further understanding of reliability of various kinds of historical sources (Critical Thinking and Analysis).

Inquiry Questions:

1. How do historical fact, opinion and fiction uniquely influence an individual's understanding of history?
2. How do historical thinkers determine the accuracy of history?
3. What types of questions do historical thinkers ask about the past?
4. Why do historical thinkers use multiple sources in studying history?

Nature and Skills of History:

1. Historical thinkers use primary sources to distinguish fact from fiction.
2. Historical thinkers distinguish fact from fiction when used to make informed decisions. For example: Consumers must critically analyze advertisements for facts, and nonfiction writers must verify historical accuracy.
3. Historical thinkers compare information provided by different historical sources about the past.
4. Historical thinkers infer the intended audience and purpose of a historical source from information within the source itself.
5. Historical thinkers use information about a historical source, including the author, date, place of origin, intended audience, and purpose to judge the extent to which the source is useful.
6. Historical thinkers make inferences about the intended audience and purpose of a primary source from information within the source itself.

Disciplinary, Information, and Media Literacy:

1. Determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions, taking into consideration the different opinions people have about how to answer the questions.
2. Gather relevant information from multiple sources while using the origin, structure, and context to guide the selection.
3. Use distinctions between fact and opinion to determine the credibility of multiple sources.
4. Distinguish their own point of view from that of the author.
5. Compare and contrast the most important points and key details presented in two texts on the same topic.
6. Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons.
7. Use evidence to develop claims in response to compelling questions.
8. Communicate information through the use of technologies.

Colorado Essential Skills:

1. Recognize how members of a community rely on each other and interact to influence the development of their communities (Civic Engagement).

Inquiry Questions:

1. How have people from the past from diverse groups, identities, and cultures lived together and interacted with each other?
2. What types of questions do people ask to learn about the past?
3. How has a region changed and yet remained the same over time?

Nature and Skills of History:

1. Historical thinkers ask questions to guide their research into the past.
2. Historical thinkers analyze the interaction, patterns, and contributions of various cultures and groups in the past.
3. Historical thinkers use context and information from the past to make connections and inform decisions in the present. For example: The development and traditions of various groups in a region affect the economic development, tourist industry, and cultural makeup of a community.
4. Historical thinkers construct explanations using reasoning, correct sequence, examples, and details with relevant information and data.
5. Historical thinkers explain probable causes and effects of events.

Disciplinary, Information, and Media Literacy:

1. Compare and contrast the most important points and key details presented in two texts on the same topic.
2. Introduce a topic or text, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure that lists reasons.
3. Provide reasons that support an opinion.
4. Provide a concluding statement or section.
5. Introduce a topic and group related information together; include illustrations when useful to aid comprehension.
6. Develop a topic with facts, definitions, and details.
7. Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.
8. Determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions, taking into consideration the different opinions people have about how to answer the questions.
9. Communicate information through the use of technologies.