What is Social Studies in fourth grade? It is the study of the cycle of change–a way of understanding how change happens in our world historically and today.

Our key questions are:

• What causes conflict?
• How is conflict resolved?
• How do remaining problems cause future conflict?

We look at how individuals make a difference.

In all of our units, we use a discovery-based method of exploring historical and contemporary issues. We look at artifacts and primary source materials as well as acting out historical events and writing about them to look at the feelings and reactions of people at the time.

We use the cycle of change to examine the American Revolution, the Civil War, and a research topic that students choose that can involve a historical or contemporary issue.