Social Studies

8th Grade Social Studies Preview

Unit 1: Forming a New Nation

1. Geography of the colonies and first states as well as the indigenous nations.

2. Catalyst events leading up to the American Revolution.

3. The purpose and meaning of the Declaration of Independence

4. Major turning points in the Revolutionary War

5. Historical Fiction as a vehicle for historical inquiry and research

6. Results of the French and Indian War

7. Impacts of the Treaty of Paris

8. Individuality of Indigenous Nations

9. Perspectives on the Revolutionary War

Unit 2: Launching the New Republic

1. Effectiveness of the Articles of Confederation.

2. Key issues that emerged at the Constitutional Convention.

3. Members, terms of office, and powers of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government.

4. System of checks and balances.

5. System of shared powers between the states and the federal government.

6. How the Constitution divides powers among various levels and branches and preserves individual rights.

7. How the guiding principles of the Constitution have created “a more perfect Union” and resulted in a government that can adapt to changing times.

8. Key positions of Federalists and Republicans

9. Washington’s precedents and attitude toward the role of the federal government

10. Presidency of John Adams - Alien & Sedition, XYZ Affair

11. Positions of Federalists and Republicans in the election of 1800

12. Presidency of Jefferson - foreign policy challenges

13. Madison & the War of 1812

14. Monroe Doctrine

15. Loose and Strict Construction

Unit 3: Americans in the Mid 1800

1. Transcendentalism contributed to the spirit of reform.

2. Conditions in prisons, in schools, for slaves, and for women in the mid-1800s

3. Various reform movements

4. Contributions of Horace Mann, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglas, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

5. Declaration of Sentiments

6. Northern & Southern geographies, economies, types of transportation, and societies

7. New inventions and manufacturing methods on the North and South.

8. Geographic, economic, and political factors involved in creation of network of roads, canals, and railroads.

9. Free people of color in the North with those of free people of color in the South.

10. Aspects of life as an enslaved person and forms of resistance

11. Amistad Case

Unit 4: An Expanding Nation

1. Philosophy of Manifest Destiny

2. Changing boundaries of the United States throughout the 1800s

3. Causes, events, and effects of the Texas War for Independence

4. Oregon Country and Oregon Trail

5. Motives, hardships, and economic incentives associated with westward expansion.

6. Role of pioneer women and the new status that western women achieved

7. Causes and results of the Mexican-American War

8. California Gold Rush

9. Gadsden Purchase

10. Louisiana Purchase

11. Expansion of technology

12. Expansion of voting rights

13. Expansion of population and immigration

Unit 5: Civil War

1. Civil War- Causes (Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott Case, John Brown, Sectionalism to Secession, Election of 1860, Popular Sovereignty, etc.)

2. Civil War- Diverse Roles

3. Civil War- Critical Events (Battle of Gettysburg, Siege at Vicksburg, Battle of Antietam)

4. Civil War- Factors in the results (Differences of the North and South, etc.)

5. Civil War- Costs

6. Legacy of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address

Unit 6: Reconstruction

1. Assassination of Lincoln

2. Johnson and Reconstruction

3. Freedman’s Bureau

4. Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments

5. KKK & Black Codes

6. Grant & Radical Reconstruction

7. End of Reconstruction

8. Nadir Period