Kansas standards alignment

• HS-ESS3-1

  Partially covered

  Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity.

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Kava — The Root of Peace

  • · Ep 1 · Climate Change Is Redrawing the Map
  • · Ep 3 · A Two-Degree Threat
  • · Ep 6 · Why Volcanic Soil Only
  • · Ep 10 · Karst Limestone and Bourbon
  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, assess a producing country's climate viability and defend the assessment

  What we do and don't cover: Read this one carefully before you rely on it. This is NOT a science course, it has no laboratory work, no investigations and no scientific modelling. What it does have is precisely the content of HS-ESS3-1: resource availability and climate change shaping what humans do and where. The lessons supply the evidence; the STUDENT constructs the explanation only in the Coffee project (Option B). If your science requirement is assessed on the three-dimensional NGSS performance, this contributes to it, it does not discharge it.

What we don't claim

A standards page is only worth reading if the omissions are honest too. We looked at these and left them out:

• Kansas assesses SKILLS, not content — so Kansas's own structure has no code of its own. Kansas's standards are the five thematic Standards and their benchmarks, and KSDE states outright that assessments focus on the Standards and Benchmarks, not specific content, and that the government course's content outline is not a list of required items. So Kansas — unlike Oklahoma or Utah — publishes NO standard that names its plural executive, its 125-member House and 40-member Senate, its merit-selection Supreme Court, its absence of a citizen initiative, its strong home rule, or its 105 counties. The Kansas Civics flagship teaches all of these in depth, but as the CONTENT through which the benchmark skills are exercised; we map them onto the benchmarks (above) rather than inventing content codes Kansas does not publish.
• Standard 3 (beliefs, ideas, and diversity) — not claimed. Standard 3 and its benchmarks (3.1-3.4) ask students to recognize, analyze, investigate, and apply the significant beliefs, contributions, and ideas of diverse peoples and groups. The Kansas Civics flagship and the general civics ladder teach government structure and civic practice, not a survey of diverse beliefs and contributions, so we do not claim Standard 3. (The catalog's history courses touch this content in other states' content-bearing frameworks, but Kansas's skills framework is the wrong home for it here.)
• The other benchmarks under Standards 1, 2, 4, and 5 — not claimed. Within the standards we do touch, we claim only the benchmarks whose skill the flagship genuinely exercises. The analyze/draw-conclusions and use/apply benchmarks we did not map (1.2, 1.3, 2.2, 4.3, 4.4, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4) call for sustained, graded analysis or the construction of a personal/community/state narrative that this catalog prompts but does not deliver as assessed work. We leave them unclaimed rather than round a prompt up to a performance.
• The federal-heavy and policy units of Kansas's US Government course. Kansas's HS United States Government course suggests units on Principles and Foundations of the U.S. Constitution, the Structure and Function of the Federal Government, Human and Civil Rights, Domestic and Foreign Policy, and Politics/Interest Groups/Media. The general civics ladder (US Civics 101, US Constitution 101, the three-branches courses, Know Your Rights) covers much of the first three, but Domestic and Foreign Policy (fiscal policy, GDP, treaties, NATO/UN, the Monroe Doctrine) is economics/international-relations content this catalog does not teach, so we do not claim those units.
• Mathematics — nothing. This catalog does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no Kansas College and Career Ready (KCCRS / Common Core) mathematics standard.
• Science — one partial claim, via the shared NGSS file. Kansas adopted the NGSS verbatim as the Kansas College and Career Ready Standards for Science (June 11, 2013), so our one honest science claim — HS-ESS3-1, partial — comes through the shared NGSS mapping with the limit stated on the entry. There is no laboratory work, investigation, or modelling in this catalog, and we will not claim more.
• A 2020 revision exists — confirm current codes. Kansas published a 2020 revision of the History, Government, and Social Studies Standards with the same five-standard design (five standards and four associated benchmarks, measured by a Classroom-Based Assessment). We cite the 2013 edition here; a teacher should confirm the current benchmark wording against KSDE's present document before filing.