Middle School Curriculum

World Geography Students have the opportunity to take an exciting journey of discovery around the world in Grade 6 World Geography. Their trip will begin with a comprehensive unit of the foundational skills and understandings of both physical and cultural geography. This unit includes a look at the world through the lens of the five themes of geography – location, regions, place, movement, and human-environment interaction. This first unit also includes an introduction to the tools and skills geographers use to study the world. As students journey through units of study in the world regions of Asia, Africa, Europe and Russia and Latin America, they will learn to apply their geography skills, explore the causes and consequences of global issues, and work toward solutions to these problems as global citizens. Students will develop understandings of these regions as well as see the interconnections between them.

World Geography Course Enduring Understandings:

1. Geography is important to study because it informs our daily decisions.

2. Physical geography affects the way people live in different regions of the world.

3. The Earth is continually changing and people need to adapt to changing environments.

4. The events of the past affect the way people live today and can impact the future.

5. There are many ways in which Earth’s resources can be used and preserved.

6. The challenges of our increasingly global society must be understood in order to help us interact positively with our world.

The Grade 6 History and Social Sciences Department World Geography curriculum is grounded in the C3 Framework for Social Studies Standards. Focus throughout the course is on building content knowledge as well as reading, writing, speaking, and geographic literacy skills.

Please click here for Gideon Welles School Social Studies grading guidelines.

World History is a course designed to take students on a journey of exploration through the world’s civilizations.  The course begins by providing students with a sense of history.  Students will travel through the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and the Americas, and then on to the classical civilizations of Greece, Rome and Islam.  The course concludes with the study of the ideas, inventions, and explorations of the Middle Ages and the Early modern period.  

Student exploration is viewed through the lens of common themes,  that connect and integrate the world’s diverse history.  Through their study, students will enrich their knowledge of major historical periods, issues, and patterns in world history, as well as acquire, develop and apply the skills and process of historical thinking and inquiry.

Please click here for the Smith Middle School History grading guidelines. 

Students in U.S. History 8 will use a national lens to enrich their knowledge of the major historical periods, issues, concepts and patterns in United States History. Their journey through our country’s history will begin with the meeting of the world’s cultures in the pre-Columbian period and continue through to the transformation of our nation in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras. Throughout their studies, students will enrich their understanding of the connecting themes and enduring understandings of American History and acquire, develop and apply the skills and processes of historical thinking.

Units of Study:

• Three Worlds Collide

• Settlement and Colonial America

• The Causes of the American Revolution

• The American War for Independence

• The Constitution

• The New Republic

• Transformation of the Nation

• The Causes of the Civil War

• The Civil War

• Reconstruction and Into the New Century

Please click here for the Smith Middle School History grading guidelines.