Search every subject world, from Preschool to Grade 12. The first five courses of every subject path are free.
16 courses
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 3
Third graders practise the historian's toolkit with Abraham Lincoln's years in Springfield, Illinois: asking compelling and supporting questions, sourcing a real primary source (his 1861 farewell speech), telling evidence from opinion, checking one source against another, and placing events on a timeline to find how many years passed.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 3
Third graders locate Illinois in the United States and North America, name its neighbors and the rivers and lake along its borders, compare its northern, central and southern regions, and use population data to compare urban, suburban and rural Illinois communities and explain how land and water shape where and how people live.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 3
Third graders learn about Cahokia, a great Mississippian city near present-day Collinsville, Illinois; the Native nations of the Illinois country and how they lived with the land through the seasons; how treaties and forced removal in the 1800s took most Native land in Illinois; and the Native nations and Chicago's Native community that continue today.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 3
Third graders use push and pull factors to explain why people moved to Illinois: settlers from the South and East in the early 1800s, immigrants from Europe, Black Southerners in the Great Migration, Mexican families in the early 1900s and newer arrivals from around the world. They read data and family stories to see how migration shaped Illinois communities.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 3
Third graders untangle the many local governments that serve an Illinois community (city or village, county, township, school district and special districts), see how a council makes an ordinance and how it is carried out and judged, follow the money in a local budget, and practise the ways citizens, including young people, take part.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 3
Third graders identify the natural, human and capital resources behind Illinois farms and factories, see how buyers and sellers set prices in a market (pumpkins before and after Halloween), explain why people and places specialize and trade, from Illinois soybeans shipped overseas to bananas shipped in, and weigh benefits, costs and opportunity costs in personal and community choices.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 3
Third graders study two big changes to Illinois waterways, the Illinois and Michigan Canal (finished 1848) and the reversal of the Chicago River (1900), from several points of view. They compare sources whose authors saw the same event differently, sort changes from continuities, and judge who gained and who lost from a change.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 3
In this project course, third graders investigate how U.S. Route 66, which began in Chicago in 1926 and crossed Illinois through towns like Joliet, Bloomington and Springfield, changed the communities along it. They plan questions, source a set of evidence, weigh evidence for and against a claim, and write and share an evidence-based answer with cited sources.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 4
Fourth graders learn the tools for studying Illinois history: dating systems (BCE and CE), decades and centuries, building a timeline to scale from Cahokia to statehood in 1818, judging how useful a source is for a question (including a real 1787 primary source), and handling sources that disagree, such as the different dates given for Jean Baptiste Point du Sable's settlement at Chicago.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 4
Fourth graders trace the Illinois Country from the arrival of French explorers and missionaries among the Illinois Confederacy, through French colonial villages (where both free and enslaved people lived), British rule and the American Revolution, to statehood in 1818 and the moves of the capital from Kaskaskia to Vandalia to Springfield, considering how each change looked to different peoples.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 4
Fourth graders sort which jobs belong to local, state and national government, learn the three branches of Illinois government under the 1970 Illinois Constitution, follow a bill through the General Assembly to the governor (including the veto and override), and explore what citizenship means and how citizens of any age can take part in state government.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 4
Fourth graders compare traditional, command, market and mixed economies; calculate profit and see how prices, profit and competition guide sellers; read Adam Smith's famous 1776 pin-factory example of specialization and connect training (human capital) to productivity and income; and map the main parts of the Illinois economy, from farms to factories to the Chicago transportation hub.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 4
Fourth graders follow the land of Illinois: how Native homelands became surveyed squares of land for sale, how the steel plow, drainage and the railroads turned tallgrass prairie into farms and new towns, how Illinois shifted from farms to cities and suburbs, and how people today weigh farming, building and protecting the last pieces of prairie.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 4
Fourth graders read the First Amendment and connect rights to responsibilities, then study how rights were denied and won in Illinois: the struggle over slavery and the state's Black Laws, the 1837 killing of newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy, the campaign that repealed the Black Laws in 1865, and the women's suffrage victories of 1913 and 1919. They compare perspectives at each step and identify the tools citizens use to change society.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 4
Fourth graders explore how Illinois shaped the United States: the 1858 Lincoln–Douglas debates and Lincoln's 'House Divided' speech, Illinois's role in the Civil War, Chicago as the crossroads of the nation's railroads and trade (and the 1894 Pullman Strike that stopped them), and how Illinois is represented in the national government today, including presidents with Illinois ties.
History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 4
In this capstone project, fourth graders investigate a real Illinois question: why did Chicago grow from a small town in 1840 into the largest city in the Midwest by 1890? They plan the inquiry, analyze census data comparing Chicago and St. Louis, a 1914 poem by Carl Sandburg and summaries of the canal, railroads and the 1871 fire, then write and present an argument with a claim, cited evidence and a counterclaim.
