Grade 8 - Social Studies

Big Ideas

Curricular Competency

Content

Contact and conflict between peoples stimulated significant cultural, social, and political change.

Human and environmental factors shape changes in population and living standards.

Exploration, expansion and colonization had varying consequences for different groups.

Changing ideas about the world created tension between people wanting to adopt new ideas and those wanting to preserve established traditions.

Use Social Studies inquiry processes and skills to ask questions; gather, interpret, and analyze ideas; and communicate findings and decisions

Assess the significance of people, places, events, or developments at particular times and places (significance)

Identify what the creators of accounts, narratives, maps, or texts have determined is significant (significance)

Assess the credibility of multiple sources and the adequacy of evidence used to justify conclusions (evidence)

Characterize different time periods in history, including periods of progress and decline, and identify key turning points that mark periods

of change (continuity and change)

Determine which causes most influenced particular decisions, actions, or events, and assess their short-and long-term consequences (cause and consequence)

Explain different perspectives on past or present people, places, issues, or events, and compare the values, worldviews, and beliefs of human cultures and societies in different times and places (perspective)

Make ethical judgments about past events, decisions, or actions, and assess the limitations of drawing direct lessons from the past (ethical judgment)

social, political, and economic systems and structures, including those of at least one indigenous civilization

scientific and technological innovations

philosophical and cultural shifts

interactions and exchanges of resources, ideas, arts, and culture between and among different civilizations

exploration, expansion, and colonization

changes in population and living standards