Indiana Social Studies WG.4.14
The Standard
Use global political, economic, cultural, or social flows to describe and illustrate interdependence between places, countries and regions.
2026 Indiana Academic Standards: K-12 Social Studies · Economic Interdependence (Globalization)
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students map where a product, payment, person, or idea travels. They explain how an event in one place can change life or work somewhere else.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student maps cobalt moving from the DRC to China, phones moving from China to the United States, and payments moving back. They explain how a mining slowdown could affect factories and phone stores.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think a product is made entirely in the country on its label. They may track goods but miss payments moving back, or assume a disruption affects only one place.
How to Assess It
- Give students a blank map and three labels: DRC cobalt, China phone factory, and Indiana phone store. Ask them to draw and label the flows, then explain how a mining slowdown could affect the store.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups DRC cobalt, China factory, and Indiana store cards; have them connect places with yarn and label arrows for materials, phones, and payments.
Ask: If DRC cobalt exports stop for a month, what might happen to a Chinese factory and an Indiana phone store?
For a flow sort, give cards saying 'phones: China to Indiana' and 'remittances: Indiana to Mexico'; students map each arrow and name its effect.
Check a shirt's 'Made in' label, map its trip to your town, and explain how shoppers and overseas factories rely on sales.
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Printable WG.4.14 Worksheet
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Related Standards
- WG.4.19
Identify and report on the impact of international networks and organizations that connect countries and influence of places, countries, and regions.
- WG.4.13
Identify contemporary spatial patterns in the movement of goods, services, and ideas throughout the world.
- GHW.8.2
Prepare graphic representations, such as maps, tables, and timelines, to describe the global movement of goods and services between and among countries and worl...
- GE.4.1
Synthesize evidence which suggests that most of the world’s countries are interdependent.
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