Texas TEKS 6.18.C
The Standard
make predictions about future social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental impacts that may result from future scientific discoveries and technological innovations
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students examine an emerging discovery or invention and predict how it could change communities. They sort possible effects into social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental areas and explain the cause behind each prediction.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can make a plausible prediction in each area and connect it to a feature of the innovation. The student can identify benefits, harms, affected groups, and uncertainty.
Common Misconceptions
- Students often list what a technology does now instead of predicting a later effect. They may treat every change as positive or confuse social, cultural, and political effects. Some predictions are unsupported or presented as certain facts.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Choose one emerging technology, then predict one economic impact and one environmental impact ten years from now. For each, write a because statement and name one group affected.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups cards about self-driving buses, lab-grown meat, and desalination, then have them build cause-and-effect chains with arrows on chart paper.
Ask students to write: Which impact of artificial intelligence could most change daily life, and what evidence makes your prediction reasonable?
Play Impact Sort: teams place prediction cards under social, political, economic, cultural, or environmental, then defend each placement.
Use a local water, farming, or transportation problem and have students propose one new technology, then predict benefits and tradeoffs.
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Printable 6.18.C Worksheet
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Related Standards
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compare the effects of scientific discoveries and technological innovations that have influenced daily life in different periods in U.S. history; and
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The student understands the influences of science and technology on contemporary societies
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evaluate the effects of scientific discoveries and technological innovations on the use of resources such as fossil fuels, water, and land; and
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Science, technology, and society. The student understands the impact of scientific discoveries and technological innovations on daily life in the United States....
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