Louisiana elementary social studies: what to teach and how to make room

Louisiana elementary teachers have something many colleagues in other states do not: a clearly named course for each grade. The K-12 Louisiana Student Standards for Social Studies, approved by BESE on March 9, 2022, give every grade a title and a focus. That makes planning easier, but it also makes it obvious when a grade falls behind, because the next year builds directly on it.

This post walks through the elementary sequence as of the 2026–27 school year, then looks at how to make room for it when reading and math take most of the day.

The elementary sequence, grade by grade

Each grade has a course title in the standards. Reading them in order shows how the years connect: children start close to home, widen out to the state and country, then move to the wider world in the upper elementary grades.

• Kindergarten: Life in My Home, School, and Local Community.
• Grade 1: Life in the Great State of Louisiana.
• Grade 2: Life in Our Great Country, the United States of America.
• Grade 3: The American Story: People, Places, and Papers.
• Grade 4: The Ancient World.
• Grade 5: The Medieval Period to the Early Modern World.
• Grades 6–8 then combine Louisiana and U.S. history in chronological order.

What this means for your planning

In Grades 1 and 2, the emphasis is on place and belonging: Louisiana and then the United States. Children learn best through maps, local landmarks, symbols, holidays and the stories of people who lived here. Local material matters most at this level, so your parish library, local museums and family stories are valuable sources.

Grade 3 is built around people, places and papers. That last word is a good hint. Third graders can start reading simple historical documents and images, asking who made them and what they tell us. Teaching children to treat a source as evidence is the most important skill this year sets up.

Grade 4 turns to the ancient world, which is a big change. Children who spent three years on home, state and nation now study civilizations far away and long ago. A strong start helps: begin with timelines so students understand how long ago these societies existed, then take one civilization at a time. Grade 5 continues the story from the medieval period into the early modern world, so a fourth grader who finishes the year with a clear timeline is well prepared.

Making room in a crowded day

Social studies is easy to push aside when literacy and math are tested and history is not. A few habits help keep it in the week.

Put social studies on the schedule as a fixed block, even if it is short, and treat it like any other subject. Use history texts during the informational reading part of your literacy block when your school allows it. Give each unit an end product, such as a poster, a short presentation or a museum table for families, so the work has a visible goal and is harder to skip.

• Ask your grade-level team to share one social studies unit each, so no one plans the whole year alone.
• Keep a class timeline on the wall for the whole year and add to it after every unit.
• Save a few short, independent lessons for days when the schedule changes at the last minute.

Plan for storm closures

Louisiana teachers know that hurricane season can take days out of the fall. Ahead of Hurricane Francine in September 2024, districts including NOLA Public Schools, Jefferson, East Baton Rouge, Terrebonne and Lafourche closed schools. Closures like these tend to land early in the year, when social studies units are just getting started.

Build your fall units so the first lessons can be compressed if needed, and keep a few lessons ready that children can do at home with a reading passage and a drawing or writing task. When school reopens, children may need calm and routine more than new content, so a simple, familiar lesson format helps everyone settle back in.

Ready units for Grades 1–4

The Elementary History Curriculum includes all 20 elementary history units for Grades 1–4 in one download. Several of them line up with the topics above: ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and China and the Stone Age for a Grade 4 ancient world study; Native Americans, explorers, Pilgrims and pioneers for the American story; and units on timelines and historical sources that support the source work in Grade 3. Each unit has an overview and three sub-units with a lesson plan, a differentiated worksheet with a reading passage and word bank, a project or source activity, an answer key and slides.

The curriculum does not include Louisiana state history, so Grade 1 teachers will need local materials for that course. Compare any unit with the Louisiana Student Standards for Social Studies before you use it; the units are not reviewed by the Louisiana Department of Education. For more on how the units fit Louisiana classrooms, see Louisiana elementary social studies units for Grades 1–4.

For homeschool families

Louisiana families have two homeschool options. One is a BESE-approved Home Study Program, which requires 180 days per year and a curriculum of quality equal to that taught in public schools at the same grade level, including the Declaration of Independence at the elementary level. The other is a nonpublic school not seeking state approval, which files an annual attendance report and also requires 180 days. History units can be part of either, but families should check current law with the state or a homeschool legal resource before deciding what to submit.