Our social science classes are designed in two-year arcs, giving students the chance to draw connections and go deeper into content. From a cognitive science perspective, these moments of connection and depth make learning durable over the long term, so that students retain what they learn in social science for life.

In 5th and 6th grades, students learn about geography, citizenship, politics, and economics, first at the local level, then nationally, and globally. This leads students into a two-year study of world history in 7th and 8th grade. In 9th and 10th grade, students return to America, learning about history and government, and taking elective courses.

In middle school, we elevate the rigor and relevance of our social sciences courses with weekly fieldwork and connected data science projects. Together, they add qualitative and quantitative depth to what students are learning. No other school in the DC-area offers this combination, which gives students tools to interrogate the world that they can use long after their courses end.

Every week, our middle school students spend one afternoon engaged in fieldwork, often tied to their social science course. These trips are not a ‘break’ from school; they are directly connected to what the students are learning in class, bringing the curriculum to life in memorable ways. For example, as 5th grade students in “Citizenship: Local & National” learn about the wards of DC, they visit sites in each ward–from the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens to the Frederick Douglass house. As they learn about the structure of government, they make visits to each branch–executive, legislative, and judicial–to witness them firsthand. While on these trips, students actively work on assignments that encourage them to look closer, make observations, and think critically about what they are experiencing. Through fieldwork, we make social studies concrete and personal for our students. From a cognitive science perspective, this makes the learning last, and it also brings a lot of joy to the subject. We’re sure your kids will be excited to tell you everything they learned during fieldwork each week!

From 5th grade, we sync our data science courses with our social science courses, enabling students to create their own insights and form their own conclusions. In their “Citizenship: Local & National” class, for example, 5th grade students analyze DC’s budget using data, first in and of itself, then in comparison with another city, drawing out common trends and differences in priorities. They compare their own analysis to reporting, using qualitative information to provide context to explain trends. By combining work in qualitative and quantitative methods, students have more tools to understand and improve their local community or to more deeply understand new ones.

What are social sciences? Well, they include history, economics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, and geography. Over their time at Rock Creek, all students will be introduced to each of these subjects. In middle school, students study civics, human and physical geography, and history. In high school, 11th graders take Social Sciences for Social Problems where they are introduced to scholarly disciplinary methods and apply them to projects of their choice. For example, they will build skills in observation, interviewing, and synthesis as part of writing an ethnography for the anthropology unit. In 12th grade, students have the opportunity to continue to dig into more complex methodologies and concepts from the social sciences in another set of topic electives. Each of the social sciences offers its own unique toolbox for understanding–and maybe even changing–the world. By teaching all of the social sciences, we prepare students to have a better sense of what they want to study in college, and concrete ways to contribute to the common good.

Starting in 5th grade, we introduce discussion, source evaluation, argument construction, and peer review, incorporating them into both independent work and collaborative class activities. We also teach students the value and process of auditing and contributing to research in the real-world. This starts in fifth grade, where students submit edits to improve a local Wikipedia entry in conjunction with a site visit. By 8th grade, students are prepared to develop, research, and write a 10+ page capstone paper and by 10th grade a 20+ page capstone paper on topics of further interest to them.

Civic participation is a muscle you can build, and one that we will build from the beginning. For example, in their 5th grade course Citizenship: Local & National, students don’t just analyze 311 requests, they file their own. Even where students’ ideas can’t immediately take effect, we teach a bias toward action. For example, in our 10th grade US Government & Politics course, we don’t just have students study for and pass the U.S. citizenship test, we have them evaluate and rewrite its questions. Thinking beyond yourself to improve the communities you are a part of–whether your school, your city, or your country–is the bedrock of a democratic society, and a habit we therefore cultivate in our students at Rock Creek.