Social Studies

Grades 3-5

Economics
Standard 1:
The student understands how scarcity requires
individuals and institutions to make choices about how
to use resources. (SS.D.1.2)
1. understands that all decisions involve opportunity
costs and that making effective decisions involves
considering the costs and the benefits associated
with alternative choices.
2. understands that scarcity of resources requires
choices on many levels, from the individual to
societal.
3. understands the basic concept of credit.
4. understands that any consumer (e.g., an
individual, a household, or a government) has
certain rights.
5. understands the concept of earning income and
the basic concept of a budget.

Grades 6-8

Standard 1:
The student understands how scarcity requires
individuals and institutions to make choices about how
to use resources. (SS.D.1.3)
1. knows the options and resources that are available
for consumer protection.
2. understands the advantages and disadvantages of
various kinds of credit (e.g., credit cards, bank
loans, or financing with no payment for six
months).
3. understands the variety of factors necessary to
consider when making wise consumer decisions.

Grades 9-12

Standard 1:
The student understands how scarcity requires individuals
and institutions to make choices about how to use
resources. (SS.D.1.4)
1. understands how many financial and nonfinancial
factors (e.g., cultural traditions, profit, and
risk) motivate consumers, producers, workers,
savers, and investors to allocate their scarce resources
differently.
2. understands credit history and the positive and
negative impacts that credit can have on an
individual’s financial life.


SCIENCE
Grades 9 - 12
The Nature of Science
Standard 1:
The student uses the scientific processes and habits of
mind to solve problems. (SC.H.1.4)
1. knows that investigations are conducted to explore
new phenomena, to check on previous results, to
test how well a theory predicts, and to compare
different theories.
2. knows that from time to time, major shifts occur
in the scientific view of how the world works, but
that more often the changes that take place in the
body of scientific knowledge are small modifications
of prior knowledge.
3. understands that no matter how well one theory
fits observations, a new theory might fit them as
well or better, or might fit a wider range of observations,
because in science, the testing, revising,
and occasional discarding of theories, new and old,
never ends and leads to an increasingly better
understanding of how things work in the world,
but not to absolute truth.
4. knows that scientists in any one research group
tend to see things alike and that therefore scientific
teams are expected to seek out the possible
sources of bias in the design of their investigations
and in their data analysis.
5. understands that new ideas in science are limited
by the context in which they are conceived, are
often rejected by the scientific establishment,
sometimes spring from unexpected findings, and
usually grow slowly from many contributors.
6. understands that, in the short run, new ideas that
do not mesh well with mainstream ideas in science
often encounter vigorous criticism and that,
in the long run, theories are judged by how they
fit with other theories, the range of observations
they explain, how well they explain observations,
and how effective they are in predicting new findings.
7. understands the importance of a sense of responsibility,
a commitment to peer review, truthful reporting
of the methods and outcomes of investigations,
and making the public aware of the findings.