The highlighted evidence outcomes are the priority for all students, serving as the essential concepts and skills. It is recommended that the remaining evidence outcomes listed be addressed as time allows, representing the full breadth of the curriculum.

Students Can (Evidence Outcomes):

• Analyze multiple primary and secondary sources while formulating historical questions about the Western Hemisphere. For example: Oral histories, art, artifacts, eyewitness accounts, letters and diaries, real or simulated historical sites, charts, graphs, diagrams and written texts. (1.1.b)

• Gather, organize, synthesize, and critique information, from multiple and diverse perspectives, to determine if it is sufficient to answer historical questions about the Western Hemisphere. For example: Indigenous People, Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, LGBTQ, and religious minorities and differing opinions within such groups.  (1.1.c)

• Explain how people, cultures, and ideas interact and are interconnected in the Western Hemisphere and how they have impacted modern times. For example: The “Great Dying” of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas and its consequences; rapid deforestation of the Amazon; anti-colonial and nationalist movements, the Columbian Exchange, and revolutions in energy.  (1.2.a)

• Identify examples of the social, political, cultural, and economic development in the Western Hemisphere. For example: The extension of networks of communication, colonial empires, patterns of migration over time, and international trade.  (1.2.c)

• Collect, analyze, and synthesize data from geographic tools to compare regions in the Western Hemisphere. (2.1.b)

• Examine geographic sources to formulate and investigate inquiry questions to understand the past, analyze the present, or plan for the future. (2.1.c)

• Interpret geographic data/evidence to draw conclusions, make predictions, and justify potential solutions to problems at the local, state, national, and global levels. (2.1.d)

• Classify and analyze the types of human and geographic connections between places. (2.2.a)

• Identify physical features of the Western Hemisphere and explain their effects on people who reside in the region. (2.2.b)

• Analyze positive and negative interactions of human and physical systems in the Western Hemisphere and give examples of how people have adapted to and modified their physical environment. (2.2.c)

• Use characteristics to define physical and political regions of the past and present. (2.2.d)

• Examine changes and connections in ideas about citizenship in different times and places in the Western Hemisphere. For example: Indigenous Peoples are either denied citizenship or citizenship is not always desired; immigration and a nation’s quota preferences; and the changes in naturalization requirements change over time.  (4.1.a)

• Explain how political ideas of significant people and groups interact, are interconnected, and influence nations and regions in the Western Hemisphere, both in the past and today.  (4.1.b)

• Identify historical examples illustrating how people from diverse backgrounds such as African American, Latino, Asian American, and Indigenous Peoples in the Western Hemisphere perceived, reacted to, and influenced national and international policies and issues.  (4.1.d)

• Identify how different systems of government relate to their citizens in the Western Hemisphere and how systems of government create advantages for some of their citizens and disadvantages for others.  (4.2.c)

• Explain the value each nation and/or culture places on economic prosperity, individual liberty, human rights, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, equal rights, and respect for neighbors. (4.2.e)

• Investigate the historical, social, and cultural influences of minorities on civil governments of the United States, and the rest of the Western Hemisphere. (4.2.f)

Academic Vocabulary and Language Expectations

• Indigenous Peoples, culture regions, immigration, push/pull factors, migration, emigration, refugee, culture, assimilation, population density, multicultural

• Grade 6-8 Social Studies Language Expectations