U.S. History and Geography: Growth and Conflict (8th grade)
Skills Attainment and Social Participation
Basic Study Skills
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.8
Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.
Students distinguish fact from opinion in historical narratives and stories.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.2.a
Introduce a topic clearly, previewing what is to follow; organize ideas, concepts, and information into broader categories as appropriate to achieving purpose; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., charts, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
H-SS AS: Students explain the central issues and problems from the past, placing people and events in a matrix of time and place.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.
Critical Thinking Skills
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6
Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).
H-SS AS: Students detect the different historical points of view on historical events and determine the context in which the historical statements were made (the questions asked, sources used, author’s perspectives)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.7
Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.
H-SS AS: Students frame questions that can be answered by historical study and research.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.2
Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.
H-SS AS: Students assess the credibility of primary and secondary sources and draw sound conclusions from them.
Participation Skills
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.10
Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.
H-SS AS: Students explain how major events are related to one another in time.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.5
With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
H-SS AS: Students assess the
credibility of primary and
secondary sources and
draw sound conclusions
from them.
Democratic Understand and Civic Vaules
Civic Values, Rights and Responsiblities
8.2.6. Enumerate the powers of government set forth in the Constitution and the fundamental liberties ensured by the Bill of Rights.
8.12.6. Discuss child labor, working conditions, and laissez-faire policies toward big business and examine the labor movement, including its leaders (e.g., Samuel Gompers), its demand for collective bargaining, and its strikes and protests over labor conditions.
8.3.7. Understand the functions and responsibilities of a free press.
Constitutional Heritage
8.3.5. Know the significance of domestic resistance movements and ways in which the central government responded to such movements (e.g., Shays' Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebel-lion).
8.1.2. Analyze the philosophy of government expressed in the Declaration of Independence, with an emphasis on government as a means of securing individual rights (e.g., key phrases such as "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights").
8.3.1. Analyze the principles and concepts codified in state constitutions between 1777 and 1781 that created the context out of which American political institutions and ideas developed.
National Identity
8.6.7. Identify common themes in American art as well as transcendentalism and individualism (e.g., writings about and by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).
8.1.4. Describe the nation's blend of civic republicanism, classical liberal principles, and English parliamentary traditions.
8.1.3. Analyze how the American Revolution affected other nations, especially France.
Knowledge and Cultural Understanding
Sociopolitical Literacy
8.3.4. Understand how the conflicts between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton resulted in the emergence of two political parties (e.g., view of foreign policy, Alien and Sedition Acts, economic policy, National Bank, funding and assumption of the revolutionary debt).
8.2.4. Describe the political philosophy underpinning the Constitution as specified in the Federalist Papers (authored by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay) and the role of such leaders as Madison, George Washington, Roger Sherman, Gouverneur Morris, and James Wilson in the writing and ratification of the Constitution.
8.2.3. Evaluate the major debates that occurred during the development of the Constitution and their ultimate resolutions in such areas as shared power among institutions, divided state-federal power, slavery, the rights of individuals and states (later addressed by the addition of the Bill of Rights), and the status of American Indian nations under the commerce clause.
Economic Literacy
8.5.1.Understand the political and economic causes and consequences of the War of 1812 and know the major battles, leaders, and events that led to a final peace.
8.4.3. Analyze the rise of capitalism and the economic problems and conflicts that accompanied it (e.g., Jackson's opposition to the National Bank; early decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court that reinforced the sanctity of contracts and a capitalist economic system of law).
Geographic Literacy
8.6.1. Discuss the influence of industrialization and technological developments on the region, including human modification of the landscape and how physical geography shaped human actions (e.g., growth of cities, deforestation, farming, mineral extraction).
8.5.2. Know the changing boundaries of the United States and describe the relationships the country had with its neighbors (current Mexico and Canada) and Europe, including the influence of the Monroe Doctrine, and how those relationships influenced westward expansion and the Mexican-American War.
8.4.1. Describe the country's physical landscapes, political divisions, and territorial expansion during the terms of the first four presidents.
Cultural Literacy
8.6.6. Examine the women's suffrage movement (e.g., biographies, writings, and speeches of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Fuller, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony).
8.8.3. Describe the role of pioneer women and the new status that western women achieved (e.g., Laura Ingalls Wilder, Annie Bidwell; slave women gaining freedom in the West; Wyoming granting suffrage to women in 1869).
Ethnic Literacy
8.7.4. Compare the lives of and opportunities for free blacks in the North with those of free blacks in the South.
8.4.4. Discuss daily life, including traditions in art, music, and literature, of early national America (e.g., through writings by Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper).
8.9.2. Discuss the abolition of slavery in early state constitutions.
Historical Literacy
8.7.2. Trace the origins and development of slavery; its effects on black Americans and on the region's political, social, religious, economic, and cultural development; and identify the strategies that were tried to both overturn and preserve it (e.g., through the writings and historical documents on Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey).
8.2.1. Discuss the significance of the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, and the May-flower Compact.
8.1.1. Describe the relationship between the moral and political ideas of the Great Awakening and the development of revolutionary fervor.
