Extend and enrich your social studies curriculum With these six softbound texts, ideal for low-level readers, teachers can custom-design a course on world cultures. Texts focus on Asia and the Middle East, Africa, Europe, the United States and Canada, Latin America, and Russia and the Former Soviet Republics. Each text explores a single region and offers a rich mix of topics, including: Geography and Climate, History, Major Inventions, Family and Life Patterns, Economics, Expression Through the Arts and Entertainment, and Current World Issues. The Teacher's Guide includes Chapter-by-chapter suggestions for classroom instruction Scope and sequence chart Answers to textbook questions and Blackline Masters activities Suggestions for additional activities to extend each lesson Blackline Masters are included in each text with activities to reinforce information presented in the texts. Reading Level: 3-4 Interest Level: 8-12

Describes the geography, history and cultures of the United States and Canada.

North America is steering a new course, with the United States, Canada, and Mexico moving toward continental economic, integration. This book examines basic value changes that are' transforming economic, social, and political life in these three countries, demonstrating that they are gradually adopting an increasingly compatible cultural perspective. A narrow nationalism, dominant since the 19th century, has slowly been giving way to a more cosmopolitan sense of identity. As old economic boundaries become outmoded, a North American perspective makes greater sense. To what extent, then, do the three North American publics - I each with its own heterogeneities and tensions - share a common culture? That question can only be answered if we have some yardstick by which to measure their cultural similarity. These societies are far from identical. But data from the 1990- 1991 World Values survey, drawn from 43 societies around the world, show that on crucial topics, the core values of the American public are significantly closer to those of the Canadians and (to a somewhat lesser extent) to those of the Mexicans, than they are to those of most other peoples in the world. Furthermore, time series evidence indicates that the values of the three North American publics have been converging. This book draws on a unique body of directly comparable cross-national and cross-temporal survey evidence to show that what Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans want out of life is changing in analogous ways. These changes, coupled with sociostructural transformations, are reshaping peoples' feelings about national identity, about trusting each other, and about the balance between economic and non-economic goals. North American economic integration is being reinforced by the gradual emergence of increasingly similar cultural values.