Grades 6 - 8
Unit 1: World Deserts
Focus: In this unit, students review skills of using maps and globes and then apply those skills in learning about deserts of the world.
They explore the characteristics of desert landscapes and life forms, with a focus on the Sahara and Kalahari in Africa; the Outback of Australia; the Gobi in Asia; the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan in North America; and the Atacama in South America. Students also study people who live in deserts, such as the San people of southern Africa and the Aborigines of the Australian Outback.
Number of Lessons: 6
Lesson Time: 45 minutes each daily. Lessons may be combined into longer sessions.
Additional Search Terms: social studies • geography • map skills • nonfiction • informational text
Unit 2: Ancient Greece and Rome
Focus: In this unit, students explore how the cultural and political traditions of ancient Greece and Rome have influenced Western society more profoundly than perhaps any other civilizations in world history. The political institutions of these two great civilizations—including the early forms of democracy established in Athens and several other city-states of ancient Greece, and the judicious power sharing articulated in the Roman Republic—have been incorporated into many subsequent societies.
Number of Lessons: 17
Lesson Time: 45 minutes each daily. Lessons may be combined into longer sessions.
Additional Search Terms: social studies • geography • map skills • nonfiction • informational text • primary source documents • myths • Mediterranean region • city-state • Athens • Parthenon • Olympics • Apollo and Daphne • Orpheus and Eurydice • Narcissus and Echo • Thermopylae • Sparta • Alexandria • the Pantheon • Ovid • Pygmalion and Galatea myths • patricians and plebeians • consuls, tribunes, senators • Carthage • Hannibal • Shakespeare
Unit 3: The Enlightenment
Focus: The resources for this unit (The Enlightenment) are part of the individual resources titled The Enlightenment, The French Revolution and Romanticism. This unit introduces students to the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason.
Students explore the ideas of influential writers, scientists, and philosophers in Western Europe from the late 1600s through the 1700s. These Enlightenment thinkers, with their emphasis on intellectual freedom and natural rights, ushered in the modern age. Students also explore how the ideas of Europe’s Enlightenment thinkers are echoed within the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and others embraced these revolutionary ideas.
Number of Lessons: 6
Lesson Time: 45 minutes each daily. Lessons may be combined into longer sessions.
Additional Search Terms: social studies • geography • map skills • nonfiction • informational text • Isaac Newton • René Descartes • Thomas Hobbes • John Locke • Voltaire • Baron de Montesquieu • scientific revolution • reason • “divine right of kings” • philosophy • monarchy • Parliament • social contract • natural rights • separation of powers
Unit 4: The French Revolution
and Romaniticism
Focus: The resources for this unit (The French Revolution and Romanticism) are part of the individual resources titled The Enlightenment, The French Revolution and Romanticism. This unit introduces students to both the French Revolution and the cultural movement known as Romanticism. The unit first explores how Enlightenment ideas of freedom, equality, and natural rights, as well as the recent American Revolution, helped ignite the French Revolution in 1789, bringing down the ancien régime—the “old order,” with its indulgent absolute monarchy and rigid social classes.
Number of Lessons: 12
Lesson Time: 45 minutes each daily. Lessons may be combined into longer sessions.
Additional Search Terms: social studies • geography • map skills • nonfiction • informational text • John Locke • Montesquieu • Voltaire • Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Louis XIV (Sun King) • Versailles • Bastille • First, Second, and Third Estates • Declaration of the Rights of Man • Women’s March to Versailles • National Assembly • “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” • Wellington and Waterloo • Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii • Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
Unit 5: The Industrial Revolution
Changes and Challenges
Focus: In this unit, students examine the sweeping transformation in how people worked and lived during the Industrial Revolution, 1760s–1830s. This revolution, which began in Great Britain and spread to Europe and America, lured people away from the land to factories and cities in massive numbers; spurred new inventions; opened the doors to wealth and advancement for inventors and investors alike; and, led to the primacy of capitalism as a social and economic system in the West.
Number of Lessons: 12
Lesson Time: 45 minutes each daily. Lessons may be combined into longer sessions.
Additional Search Terms: social studies • nonfiction• informational text • geography • map skills • steam engine • industrialization • Patience Kershaw • free market • serfdom • James Watt • Robert Fulton • John Kay • spinning jenny • James Hargreaves • Eli Whitney • cotton gin • capitalism • mercantilism • Adam Smith • supply and demand • laissez-faire • Charles Dickens • Benjamin Disraeli • Luddites • Robert Owen • socialism • Karl Marx • Friedrich Engels • The Communist Manifesto • class struggle
Unit 6: The Independence of Latin America
Focus: In this unit, students explore the wave of independence movements that led to the liberation of French, Spanish, and Portuguese Latin American colonies, beginning in the late 1700s and lasting into the early 1900s. Generally, these colonies had rigid class systems, with wealthy landowners controlling large tracts of land and poor workers providing the labor.
Number of Lessons: 7
Lesson Time: 45 minutes each daily. Lessons may be combined into longer sessions.
Additional Search Terms: social studies • nonfiction• informational text • geography • map skills • colonialism • indigenous people • Creoles • mestizos • enslaved people • class system • St. Domingue • Hispaniola • Toussaint L’Ouverture • Haitian rebellion • Jean Jacques Dessalines • Mexico • Querétaro • Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla • Ignacio Allende • José María Morelos • Agustin de Iturbide • General Santa Anna • Benito Juarez • Pancho Villa • Emiliano Zapata • Simón Bolívar • Francisco de Miranda • New Granada • Venezuela • Gran Colombia • Buenos Aires • Río de la Plata • Chile • José de San Martín • Brazil • King João VI • Pedro I
Unit 7: Immigration
Focus: The resources for this unit (Immigration) are part of the individual resources titled The Making of America: Immigration, Industrialization, and Reform. In this unit, students investigate the history of immigration to America in the 1800s and early 1900s and the reasons why so many people left their home countries to better their lives in “the land of opportunity.” Before the Civil War, many immigrants came from northern and western Europe, and prior to this, thousands of Africans were brought to America against their will and enslaved.
Number of Lessons: 5
Lesson Time: 45 minutes each daily. Lessons may be combined into longer sessions.
Additional Search Terms: social studies • nonfiction• informational text • geography • map skills • push and pull factors • potato blight • tenement • New Immigrants • Statue of Liberty • Ellis Island • nativism • melting pot • naturalization
Unit 8: Industrialisation and
Urbanisation in America
Focus: The resources for this unit (Industrialization and Urbanization in America) are part of the individual resources titled The Making of America: Immigration, Industrialization, and Reform. In this unit, students explore the significant demographic and economic shifts that took place in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as the rise of big business ushered in an era of industrialization and urbanization across the country.
During this period, the country became an industrial giant, with vast numbers of Americans moving to the cities for factory jobs, capitalist entrepreneurs becoming exceedingly rich tycoons of big business, and inventors changing the way ordinary people lived for the better.
Number of Lessons: 10
Lesson Time: 45 minutes each daily. Lessons may be combined into longer sessions.
Additional Search Terms: social studies • nonfiction• informational text • geography • map skills • Samuel Slater • transcontinental railroads • Cornelius Vanderbilt • market economy • Alexander Graham Bell • Thomas Alva Edison • Andrew Carnegie • John D. Rockefeller • Bessemer furnace • Standard Oil Company • robber barons • monopoly • trust • The Gilded Age • free enterprise • the Machine Age • child labor • Samuel Gompers • labor union • American Federation of Labor • urbanization • skyscraper • political machine • Boss Tweed
Unit 9: Reform in Industrial America
Focus: The resources for this unit (Reform in Industrial America) are part of the individual resources titled The Making of America: Immigration, Industrialization, and Reform. In this unit, students examine the groups and individuals who worked for political, economic, and social reform in America in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This period was a time of extremes and inequities in America, with railroad tycoons and oil magnates living in cities populated by impoverished immigrant factory workers, many farmers struggling to survive, African Americans living under Jim Crow laws that took away their civil rights, and women still not allowed to vote.
Number of Lessons: 7
Lesson Time: 45 minutes each daily. Lessons may be combined into longer sessions.
Additional Search Terms: social studies • nonfiction • informational text • geography • map skills • Populism • free silver • William Jennings Bryan • muckrakers • Ida Tarbell • John D. Rockefeller • Sherman Antitrust Act • trusts • Upton Sinclair • Jane Addams • Hull House • Jacob Riis • tenements • Theodore Roosevelt • conservation • national parks • Fourteenth Amendment • Jim Crow laws • separate but equal • civil rights • Ida B. Wells • lynching • Booker T. Washington • Tuskegee Institute • W.E.B. Du Bois • The Souls of Black Folk • National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) • women’s suffrage • Susan B. Anthony • Nineteenth Amendment • Eugene Debs • socialism • Pullman Strike