Our sixth-grade social studies curriculum could easily be called “The Student as Historian” because it revolves around teaching the student the nature of historical inquiry and enabling her or him to take on the role of historian.

 

Early in the year our study focuses on the minor kingdoms of the Eastern Mediterranean during the Iron Age. These include the Phoenicians, the Philistines and the Hebrews. Soon after, the young student as historian, turned archaeologist, begins a simulated excavation of a provincial Assyrian site. There, materials from the petty kingdoms of the Eastern Mediterranean will be found brought as tribute and booty en route to the heartland of an ever-expanding Assyrian Empire.

 

Our study of the Greek World complements the 6th grade Greek Festival Curriculum. The Greeks and the institutions that set the stage for Western Civilization are studied comprehensively.

 

The year concludes with an exploration of “Rome, the Model Empire.” Students construct provincial cities using the Roman Model to better understand how Rome unified and made the cultures of those peoples living in the areas from the Persian Gulf to the south of Scotland “Roman.”

 

Essential Questions:

 

 

 

• How do maps and globes reflect changes in history, politics, and economics?
• How is power gained, used, and justified?
• Why do some people conform, while others rebel?
• How are ideas transmitted?
• How do technology, science, and information impact and transform societies?
• How does religion unite people? Divide people? Confront/integrate/define modernity?
• In what ways do geographical, cultural, social, political contexts transform the views we have of the past?
• In what ways do diverse global societies create varied perspectives, contributions, and challenges?
• What issues from our study of the past inform the present and shape the future?
• How have our ideas of history changed in a media driven world?

Eighth grade history is a survey of notable moments in American History. The class explores this subject chronologically, though not necessarily linearly, focusing on themes such as American culture and values, American democracy, conflict and unity, diversity, citizenship, technological change, geography and the relationship of the US to the world. These are themes that weave themselves through the development of our nation. Considerable attention is also paid to the acquisition and refinement of the tools that one needs to become an historian. Note-taking, research skills, presentation, and writing are developed throughout the year. The class uses a wide variety of primary sources; however, each assignment includes secondary source supplements including a textbook and literary sources. Assignments encourage students to explore alternative interpretations and perspectives of American History.

 

The main topics covered in the course are: Colonial America and the Revolutionary era, the Constitution, a Model Congress Assignment, Westward Expansion, the Civil War, the rise of Industrial and Urban America, a research paper considering some aspect of the New Deal and World War II eras, and a study of Civil Rights and the Supreme Court.

 

Essential Questions:

• What are American values? What were the key values upon which Jamestown and Plymouth were founded? To what extent are the values of Jamestown and Plymouth still evident in American society?
• How does one read history relative to a traditionalist, revisionist, or other historical perspective and what is the responsibility of the historian to voices that are silent?
• What justifies dissent?
• What is the impact of earlier political theorists and Enlightenment philosophers on the thinking of the revolutionary American colonists? How do those same theories impact current American thinking?
• Under what circumstances can rights be limited?
• What are the roles and obligations of a citizen?
• From where are power and authority derived? What is the difference?
• How does the Constitution work as a “living document”?  How do Supreme Court decisions and legislative actions shift our understanding of the “law of the land”?
• What are the goals and ends, intended and unintended, of westward expansion?  How do the elements of manifest destiny from the beginnings of the nation to the current era shift?  What is the psychology manifest in an expanding nation?