Social Studies

Unit 1: Geography of the United States

What can geography teach us about the United States?

Unit 2: Indigenous Peoples of North America

How did the Indigenous People of North America adapt to different environments in North America?How and why do their cultural regions differ?

Unit 3: How and Why Europeans Came to the New World, Routes of Exploration to the New World, Early English Settlements

What did explorers take to and from the New World during the Age of Exploration?

How did the exploration of the Americas lead to settlement?

What challenges faced the first English colonies?

Unit 4: Comparing the Colonies, Facing Slavery, Life in Colonial Williamsburg

How were the three colonial regions alike and different?

What was the impact of slavery on Africans?

What were key parts of life for Southern colonists in the 1700s?

Unit 5: Tensions Grow Between the Colonies and Great Britain, The Declaration of Independence

What British actions angered the colonists in the 1700s?

What were the arguments for and against colonial independence from Great Britain?

What are the main ideas in the Declaration of Independence?

Unit 6: The American Revolution, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights

How did the colonists win the American Revolution?

What are the key features of the U.S. Constitution?

What are the basic rights and freedoms of the American people?

Unit 7: Manifest Destiny and Settling the West, The Diverse Peoples of the West, The Causes of the Civil War

How did the expansion of the United States affect people inside and outside the country?

What drew new settlers to the western part of the United States in the 1800s?

What factors helped drive apart the North and the South in the mid-1800s?

Unit 8: The Civil War, Industrialization and the Modern United States

What factors contributed to the outcome of the Civil War?

How has life in the United States changed since the Civil War?