Samoa Year 6 Social Science Curriculum

This document details the Samoa Year 6 Social Science curriculum, drawing from the Samoa Primary School Curriculum. It focuses on three core strands: Society, Culture and Heritage; Place and Environment; and Resources and Economic Activities. These strands are interwoven with three key processes: Inquiry, Values Exploration, and Social Decision Making.

Society, Culture and Heritage

This strand explores how societies function, adapt, and interact. Year 6 students delve into the reasons behind societal reviews of systems and institutions, examining the impact of societal changes on individual rights, roles, and responsibilities. They also investigate cultural adaptation and responses to cultural diversity.

• How and why people organize themselves to review systems and institutions in society: Students learn to identify different types of institutions (e.g., families, political parties, religious institutions, education systems) and analyze the reasons why some systems or institutions are more resistant to change than others.
• The effects of changes in society on people's rights, roles, and responsibilities: This objective focuses on identifying societal changes (technological, social, political, economic) and describing their impact on individual rights, roles, and responsibilities, and how these changes affect interactions among people.
• How and why cultures adapt and change and how people respond to diversity of cultures and heritages: Students learn to identify how cultures adapt and change, explain factors influencing cultural adoption of new ideas, and explore the varied responses to cultural diversity, including rules and laws designed to address related challenges.

Place and Environment

This strand focuses on the dynamic relationship between people and their environment. Year 6 students investigate the implications of changes to places, the resulting impacts on people and the environment, and how descriptions of places and environments reflect different perspectives.

• The implications of changes to places: Students identify factors that lead to changes in places and environments and explain how one change can trigger further changes for people, the place, and the environment.
• The impacts of changes for people and for the environment: This objective explores the effects of population change on people and the environment, including both positive and negative impacts.
• How people's descriptions of places and the environment reflect particular purposes and points of view: Students learn to identify the purposes behind descriptions of places and environments (e.g., archaeological, aesthetic, legal), explain different ways of describing them (e.g., maps, images, models, texts, recordings), and analyze how perspectives influence these descriptions.

Resources and Economic Activities

This strand examines how resources are allocated, managed, and used within societies. Year 6 students learn about decision-making regarding resource use, factors affecting work opportunities and conditions, and the influence of various factors on these decisions.

• How individuals and groups make decisions about the use of resources, goods, and services: Students identify factors influencing resource use decisions (e.g., price, opportunity cost, enterprise, technology) and explain how individuals, households, and businesses make these decisions.
• Why it is important for individuals and groups to make decisions about the use of resources, goods and services: This objective focuses on explaining how producers make decisions about resource use (e.g., investments) and identifying the potential consequences of these decisions.
• Factors that affect people's work opportunities and conditions: Students identify factors influencing work opportunities (e.g., legislation, economic climate, gender, social class, disabilities, education, innovation, risk-taking) and explain how factors affecting working conditions have both positive and negative consequences.

Social Studies Processes

These processes are integral to each strand.

• Inquiry: Students develop their inquiry skills by formulating questions, collecting and recording information, sorting information, making generalizations based on findings, and communicating their findings.
• Values Exploration: Students explore and analyze values, explaining their own values positions and the reasons why people hold particular values.
• Social Decision Making: Students learn to identify issues and problems, develop solutions, and make choices about possible social action.

This curriculum aims to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to become informed, confident, and responsible citizens in a changing world.