In 2016, California adopted a new History/Social Science Framework emphasizing, in equal measure: content, inquiry, literacy, and citizenship. Students engage in inquiry around the disciplines of history/social science: civics/government, economics, geography, and historyby asking big overaching questions that support the development of historical thinking skills such as cause and consequence, continuity and change, and ethics.

As such, a first grade student may find herself asking:

Who is responsible for enforcing the rules? What is our community like?

How is our life different from those who lived int he past, and how is it the same?

How do many people make one nation?

Similarly, an eighth grade student broadens his perspective by wondering:

What did freedom mean to the nation's founders, and how did it change over time?

How and why did the United States expand?

Who is considered an American? 

Ross Valley teachers bring in multiple perspectives so that the story told in class is representative of the many and diverse peoples living within our community and country.