Students in grade two explore the lives of actual people who make a difference in their everyday lives and learn the stories of extraordinary people from history whose achievements have touched them, directly or indirectly. The study of contemporary people who supply goods and services aids in understanding the complex interdependence in our free market system.

2.1 Students differentiate between those things that happened long ago and yesterday by:

1. tracing the history of a family through the use of primary and secondary sources including artifacts, photographs, interviews, and documents
2. comparing and contrasting their daily lives with those of parents and grandparents
3. placing important events in their lives in the order in which they occurred (e.g., on a timeline or story board)

2.2 Students demonstrate map skills by describing the absolute and relative locations of people, places, and environments by:

1. locating on a simple letter-number grid system the specific locations and geographic features in their neighborhood or community (e.g., map the classroom, the school)
2. labeling a simple map from memory of the North American continent, including the countries, oceans, Great Lakes, major rivers, mountain ranges; identifying the essential map elements of title, legend, directional indicator, scale, and date
3. locating on a map where their ancestors live(d), describing when their family moved to the local community, and describing how and why they made their trip
4. comparing and contrasting basic land use in urban, suburban and rural environments in California

2.3 Students explain the institutions and practices of governments in the United States and other countries, in terms of:

1. the difference between making laws, carrying out laws, determining if laws have been violated and punishing wrongdoers
2. the ways in which groups and nations interact with one another and try to resolve problems (e.g., trade, cultural contacts, treaties, diplomacy, military force)

2.4 Students understand basic economic concepts and their individual roles in the economy, and demonstrate basic economic reasoning skills, in terms of:

1. food production and consumption long ago and today including the role of farmers, processors, distributors, weather, and land and water resources
2. the role and interdependence of buyers (consumers) and sellers (producers) of goods and services
3. how limits on resources require people to choose what to produce and what to consume

2.5 Students understand the importance of individual action and character and explain how heroes from long ago and the recent past make a difference in others' lives (e.g., biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Louis Pasteur, Sitting Bull, George Washington Carver, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Jackie Robinson, Sally Ride)

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