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3.  What national curriculum standards relate to Iowa history?

Grades K-4 History Standards
United States History Standards
Historical Understanding Standards and Benchmarks
Geography Standards


Grades K-4 History Standards (National Standards)

For each of the following sets of standards, those most closely aligned with a study of Iowa's history appear in bold type.

Topic 1 - Living and Working Together in Families and Communities, Now and Long Ago

1.  Understands family life now and in the past, and family life in various places long ago

2.  Understands the history of a local community and how communities in North America varied long ago

Topic 2 - The History of Students' Own State or Region

3. Understands the people, events, problems, and ideas that were significant in creating the history of their state

Topic 3 - The History of the United States: Democratic Principles and Values and the People from Many Cultures who Contributed to its Cultural, Economic, and Political Heritage

4.Understands how democratic values came to be, and how they have been exemplified by people, events, and symbols

Topic 4 - The History of Peoples of Many Cultures Around the World

5. Understands the causes and nature of movements of large groups of people into and within the United States, now and long ago

6. Understands the folklore and other cultural contributions from various regions of the United States and how they helped to form a national heritage

7. Understands selected attributes and historical developments of societies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe

8. Understands major discoveries in science and technology, some of their social and economic effects, and the major scientists and inventors responsible for them

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United States History Standards (National Standards)

For each of the following sets of standards, those most closely aligned with a study of Iowa's history appear in bold type.

Era 1 - Three Worlds Meet (Beginnings to 1620)

1. Understands the characteristics of societies in the Americas, Western Europe, and Western Africa that increasingly interacted after 1450

2. Understands cultural and ecological interactions among previously unconnected people resulting from early European exploration and colonization

Era 2 - Colonization and Settlement (1585-1763)

3. Understands why the Americas attracted Europeans, why they brought enslaved Africans to their colonies and how Europeans struggled for control of North America and the Caribbean

4. Understands how political, religious, and social institutions emerged in the English colonies

5. Understands how the values and institutions of European economic life took root in the colonies and how slavery reshaped European and African life in the Americas

Era 3 - Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s)

6. Understands the causes of the American Revolution, the ideas and interests involved in shaping the revolutionary movement, and reasons for the American victory

7. Understands the impact of the American Revolution on politics, economy, and society

8. Understands the institutions and practices of government created during the Revolution and how these elements were revised between 1787 and 1815 to create the foundation of the American political system based on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights

Era 4 - Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

9. Understands the United States territorial expansion between 1801 and 1861, and how it affected relations with external powers and Native Americans

10. Understands how the industrial revolution, increasing immigration, the rapid expansion of slavery, and the westward movement changed American lives and led to regional tensions

11. Understands the extension, restriction, and reorganization of political democracy after 1800

12. Understands the sources and character of cultural, religious, and social reform movements in the antebellum period

Era 5 - Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

13. Understands the causes of the Civil War

14. Understands the course and character of the Civil War and its effects on the American people

15. Understands how various reconstruction plans succeeded or failed

Era 6 - The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)

16. Understands how the rise of corporations, heavy industry, and mechanized farming transformed American society

17. Understands massive immigration after 1870 and how new social patterns, conflicts, and ideas of national unity developed amid growing cultural diversity

18. Understands the rise of the American labor movement and how political issues reflected social and economic changes

19. Understands federal Indian policy and United States foreign policy after the Civil War

Era 7 - The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930)

20. Understands how Progressives and others addressed problems of industrial capitalism, urbanization, and political corruption

21. Understands the changing role of the United States in world affairs through World War I

22. Understands how the United States changed between the post-World War I years and the eve of the Great Depression

Era 8 - The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)

23. Understands the causes of the Great Depression and how it affected American society

24. Understands how the New Deal addressed the Great Depression, transformed American federalism, and initiated the welfare state

25. Understands the causes and course of World War II, the character of the war at home and abroad, and its reshaping of the U.S. role in world affairs

Era 9 - Postwar United States (1945 to early 1970s)

26. Understands the economic boom and social transformation of post-World War II United States

27. Understands how the Cold War and conflicts in Korean and Vietnam influenced domestic and international politics

28. Understands domestic policies in the post-World War II period

29. Understands the struggle for racial and gender equality and for the extension of civil liberties

Era 10 - Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

30. Understands developments in foreign policy and domestic politics between the Nixon and Clinton presidencies

31. Understands economic, social, and cultural developments in the contemporary United States

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Historical Understanding Standard and Benchmarks(National Standards)

Standard 1 :  Understands and knows how to analyze chronological relationships and patterns

For each of the following sets of standards, those most closely aligned with a study of Iowa's history appear in bold type.

Level I (Grade K-2)

1. Knows how to identify the beginning, middle, and end of historical stories, myths, and narratives

2. Knows how to develop picture time lines of their own lives or their family's history

3. Distinguishes among broad categories of historical time (e.g., long, long ago; long ago; yesterday; today; tomorrow)

4. Understands calendar time in days, weeks, and months

5. Knows how to identify change and continuity in his or her own life

Level II (Grade 3-5)

1. Understands calendar time in years, decades, and centuries

2. Knows how to construct time lines in significant historical developments that mark at evenly spaced intervals the years, decades, and centuries

3. Knows how to interpret data presented in time lines (e.g., identify the time at which events occurred; the sequence in which events developed; what else was occurring at the time)

4. Knows how to identify patterns of change and continuity in the history of the community, state, and nation, and in the lives of people of various cultures from times long ago until today

5.  Distinguishes between past, present, and future time

6. Understands the broadly defined eras of state and local historical events

Level III (Grade 6-8)

1. Knows how to diagram the temporal structure of events in autobiographies, biographies, literary narratives, and historical narratives, and understands the differences between them

2. Knows how to construct and interpret multiple tier time lines (e.g., a time line that contains important social, economic, and political developments in colonial history; a time line that compares developments in the English, French, and Spanish colonies in North America)

3.  Knows how to calculate calendar time B.C. (before Christ) or B.C.E. (before the Common Era), and A.D.  (Anno Domini) or C.E. (in the Common Era), determining the onset, duration, and ending dates of historical events or developments

4.  Understands patterns of change and continuity in the historical succession of related events

5.  Knows how to impose temporal structure on their historical narratives (e.g., working backward from some issue, problem, or event to explain its causes that arose from some beginning and developed through subsequent transformations over time)

6. Knows how to periodize events of the nation into broadly defined eras      

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Standard 2:  Understands the historical perspective

Level II (Grade 5-6)

For each of the following sets of standards, those most closely aligned with a study of Iowa's history appear in bold type.

1. Knows how to view the past in terms of the norms and values of the time

2. Understands that specific individuals had a great impact on history

3. Understands that specific ideas had an impact on history

4. Understands that "chance events" had an impact on history

5. Understands that specific decisions and events had an impact on history

6. Evaluates historical fiction according to the accuracy of its content and the author's interpretation

7. Predicts how events might have turned out differently in one's local community if specific individuals or groups had chosen different courses of action    

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Geography Standards (National Standards)

For each of the following sets of standards, those most closely aligned with a study of Iowa's history appear in bold type.

The World in Spatial Terms

1. Understands the characteristics and uses of maps, globes, and other geographic tools and technologies

2. Knows the location of places, geographic features, and patterns of the environment

3. Understands the characteristics and uses of spatial organization of Earth's surface

Places and Regions

4. Understands the physical and human characteristics of place

5. Understands the concept of regions

6. Understands that culture and experience influence people's perceptions of places and regions

Physical Systems

7. Knows the physical processes that shape patterns on Earth's surface

8. Understands the characteristics of ecosystems on Earth's surface

Human Systems

9. Understands the nature, distribution and migration of human populations on Earth's surface

10. Understands the nature and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics

11. Understands the patterns and networks of economic interdependence on Earth's surface

12. Understands the patterns of human settlement and their causes

13. Understands the forces of cooperation and conflict that shape the divisions of Earth's surface

Environment and Society

14. Understands how human actions modify the physical environment

15. Understands how physical systems affect human systems

16. Understands the changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution and importance of resources

17. Understands how geography is used to interpret the past

Uses of Geography

18. Understands global development and environmental issues

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Copyright 2008 Iowa History Online.
Malcolm Price Laboratory School
Lynn Nielsen, Project Director
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA