WGU D680: Elementary Social Studies Curriculum

Where D680 Fits in Your Elementary Education Degree Plan

D680 Elementary Social Studies Curriculum is the social studies content course inside WGU's Master of Arts in Teaching, Elementary Education. The program guidebook places it at 2 competency units in term five of the standard path, alongside the elementary mathematics and science courses. Its purpose is straightforward: before you can plan a social studies unit for eight-year-olds, you need a confident command of the content itself — history, geography, civics, economics, and culture — plus a working knowledge of how elementary social studies standards are put together.

Direct answer: Pass D680 by treating it as a broad content-recall assessment rather than a writing project. Work through the course material one discipline at a time — geography and the social sciences, U.S. history and civics, world history, economics, and standards — then drill yourself with retrieval practice and the pre-assessment until you can explain the major concepts in each area without notes.

Many people arriving in the MAT program are career changers, and D680 may be the first time since your own undergraduate years that you have thought carefully about the branches of government, the Columbian Exchange, or the difference between a command and a market economy. That is normal, and the course is built for it: WGU's description frames the work as multidisciplinary by design, covering history, geography, civics, economics, and culture together rather than in isolation.

One naming note that saves a lot of confusion: WGU runs an undergraduate course with the same title and essentially the same published description, numbered D673, where it carries 3 competency units. Older forum threads and shared study sets very often use that code instead. The content overlaps heavily, so D673 material is usually relevant — just confirm your own degree plan says D680 before you follow anyone's specific course-of-study advice.

The Five Competencies Behind the Assessment

WGU publishes the competencies in its program guidebooks. Paraphrased, they mark out five areas, and the assessment samples across all of them:

• Elementary social studies standards and resources — how content standards for young learners are organized, and what instructional resources exist to support them.
• Geography, anthropology, and sociology — physical and human geography, map and spatial reasoning, culture, and the basic vocabulary of how societies and groups are studied.
• U.S. history, government, and civics — founding documents and the Constitution, the structure and separation of powers, rights and amendments, citizenship, and the major eras of American history.
• World history and economics — ancient through modern world civilizations and their major developments, plus foundational economics: scarcity, supply and demand, economic systems, and trade.
• Evaluating resources against standards and student needs — judging whether a social science resource actually aligns to the standard you are teaching and to the individual learners in front of you.

Notice the verbs there: analyze, explain, evaluate. They describe knowing and judging content, not producing a lesson plan. Outside WGU, the NCSS thematic strands and the C3 Framework are the customary reference points for how elementary social studies standards get organized — useful background, but treat your own course materials as the authority.

The companion course, D681 Elementary Social Studies Methods, is where you design instruction and civic-dialogue experiences; its published competencies are built on verbs like designs and demonstrates. D680 asks what you know; D681 asks what you can teach.

How Hard D680 Actually Is

The difficulty here is breadth, not depth. Nothing is conceptually advanced — the course simply sweeps across several disciplines and expects you to recognize the major ideas in each. If you enjoyed history and geography, this often lands as one of the more pleasant courses in the elementary sequence. If your background is science, math, or business, expect the world history and civics material to take the most attention.

At 2 competency units, D680 is a small course, and students commonly describe moving through it in a few focused weeks rather than a full term. That stretches for anyone who has been away from these subjects for years, or who is working full time. Rather than borrowing someone else's timeline, use the pre-assessment as your measuring stick: it tells you which areas are solid and which need real work, and that gap should drive your schedule.

A Study Approach Built for Several Disciplines at Once

Passive rereading fails badly on a content assessment this broad. Build your prep around retrieval instead.

1. Take the pre-assessment early, not late. Do it before you have finished the material. A low score at that stage is diagnostic information, not a verdict, and it stops you spending three days on an area you know.
2. Study one discipline at a time, then interleave. Give geography its own sessions, then civics, then world history, then economics. Once each area has had a dedicated pass, mix questions from all of them into a single session — that mixing builds the ability to switch topics quickly during the assessment.
3. Convert every reading into questions. After a section on the Constitution, write five questions you could not have answered without reading it, then answer them from memory a day later. Self-made question banks force exactly the recall the assessment rewards.
4. Space it out; don't cram. Revisit each area on a widening schedule — the next day, three days later, a week later. Spaced review is what keeps the Bill of Rights from evaporating while you are learning about mercantilism.
5. Sketch geography, don't just read it. Draw rough world and U.S. maps from memory and label continents, major landforms, and regions. Spatial content sticks through production far better than through recognition.
6. Teach it out loud. Explain the three branches of government, or supply and demand, as if to a fourth grader. If you stumble, you have found your gap — and you are rehearsing the exact skill your future classroom needs.
7. Save the standards material for late in your prep. Reviewing how elementary social studies standards are organized works better once you have the content to hang those standards on.

If you are stacking several elementary courses in the same term, this retrieval-first method transfers cleanly to D701 Elementary Mathematics Methods and Interventions and D702 Elementary Health and Physical Education Methods. Seeing how standards drive assessment design in D184 Standards-Based Assessment also makes the standards portion of D680 feel far more intuitive.

The Mistakes That Cost D680 Students the Most Time

• Assuming it is a paper. The habit of expecting every education course to end in a written submission trips people up here. Prepare the way you would for an exam, not for an essay.
• Studying only what feels familiar. It is tempting to keep reviewing U.S. history because it is comfortable. The assessment samples every area, so economics and world history need equal time even though they feel less inviting.
• Relying on someone else's flashcard set as the whole plan. Shared sets circulate widely for this course and its undergraduate twin, and many are outdated or tied to a different course version. Your own course materials are the authority, and cards you write yourself do far more for retention than cards you merely scroll.
• Skipping the course instructor. Instructors for elementary content courses can tell you which areas students most often underestimate. That conversation often redirects a week of misplaced effort.
• Memorizing dates instead of ideas. The competencies ask you to explain major concepts, not to recite chronology. Understanding why the separation of powers exists matters more than knowing the year it was ratified.
• Treating the pre-assessment as a one-time practice run. Take it, study the gaps, and take it again if a retake is available. The second attempt tells you whether your studying actually moved anything.

D680 Readiness Checklist

• Can you name the three branches of the U.S. government and explain, in plain language, how each checks the others?
• Can you distinguish physical from human geography and give an elementary-appropriate example of each?
• Can you explain scarcity, opportunity cost, and supply and demand without reaching for notes?
• Can you describe the major features of at least four ancient world civilizations and what each contributed?
• Can you explain what a content standard is and how a social studies standard would shape what goes into a unit?
• Can you define culture, society, and socialization the way anthropology and sociology use those terms?
• Can you summarize the major eras of U.S. history in order and say what defined each?
• Can you look at a classroom resource and judge whether it actually matches the standard it claims to teach?
• Can you score comfortably across every area of the pre-assessment, not just your strongest two?

D680 FAQ

Is D680 an objective assessment or a performance assessment?

D680 is assessed by an objective assessment — a proctored, knowledge-based exam. The published competencies center on analyzing standards and explaining major concepts across the social studies disciplines, which is knowledge work rather than a submitted project. Its companion course, D681 Elementary Social Studies Methods, is where instructional design work lives. Confirm the assessment listed on your own course page, since WGU does revise courses.

How many competency units is D680 worth?

D680 is listed at 2 competency units within the Master of Arts in Teaching, Elementary Education, scheduled in term five of the standard path. The undergraduate course with the same title, D673, is listed at 3 CUs. Check your own degree plan to be sure which one you are taking.

Is D680 the same course as D673?

They share a title and an essentially identical published description, but they are separate courses at different levels — D680 is the graduate version in the MAT program, D673 the undergraduate version, and the CU values differ. Study material for one is generally useful for the other; verify anything specific against your current course materials.

How long does D680 take to finish?

Students commonly report completing it in a few weeks of focused study, and those with a social sciences background often move faster. If it has been years since you studied world history or economics, plan for more time. Your pre-assessment result is a better predictor than any average.

Do I need to memorize specific dates?

Concepts matter more than chronology here. The course competencies ask you to explain major ideas within geography, civics, U.S. and world history, and economics. Knowing the sequence and significance of major eras is useful; drilling exact dates rarely is.

Where should I start if I feel completely lost?

Start with the pre-assessment and your course instructor, in that order. The pre-assessment shows you which area is actually weak, and the instructor can point you to the sections of the course material that address it. From there, work one area at a time. You can browse related education-program guides on our School of Education hub or the full course guide index, and read WGU's own description of the degree on the official WGU elementary education master's page.