All Social Studies Units

Explore a menu of Social Studies unit plans from PreK–Grade 8, featuring engaging, standards-aligned lessons that build historical and civic understanding.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 24 (Grade 8 Social Studies): The Market Revolution

Connect regional specialization, new transport and communication tech, and financial systems to national growth—while revealing trade-offs and rising sectional tensions.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 23 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Reform Movements and Democracy in Action

Explore how abolition, women’s rights, education reform, and temperance movements used petition, press, and assembly to expand U.S. democracy and challenge its limits.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 22 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Industrial Revolution in America

Explore how 1800s innovations, labor shifts, and urbanization reshaped U.S. life—mapping trade, interdependence, and cost–benefit choices of the market revolution.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 21 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Native Nations and Forced Removal

Investigate forced removal and Indigenous resistance—map routes, analyze human–environment impacts, and evaluate tensions between founding ideals and U.S. policy.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 20 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Westward Expansion and Geography of Growth

Map how landforms, waterways, and climate guided migration routes and settlement patterns during westward expansion—shaping economies, infrastructure growth, and regional politics across the United States.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 19 (Grade 8 Social Studies): The Age of Jefferson and Jackson

Examine how Jefferson and Jackson expanded aspects of democracy while testing federal power, judicial authority, and founding ideals—and how these shifts reshaped rights, lands, and opportunities for diverse communities.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 18 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Midyear Inquiry Project—The Constitution in Practice

Analyze a contemporary or historical constitutional issue by developing a compelling question, gathering credible sources, applying constitutional structures and rights, and presenting a clear, evidence-based argument with citations and civic action.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 17 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Political Parties and Civic Debate

Examine how competing early political ideologies shaped the first U.S. party system—linking founding ideals to government structures and modeling civil, evidence-based participation in democratic discourse.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 16 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Foreign Policy and Expansion

Investigate early U.S. diplomacy, trade conflicts, and territorial expansion—mapping global connections and interdependence while explaining causes and effects of key treaties, embargoes, and acquisitions.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 15 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Economic Challenges of a New Nation

Explore how early U.S. leaders tackled war debt, built credit, and used tariffs, taxes, and a national bank to shape regional economies—balancing scarcity, choice, and opportunity cost to promote stability and growth.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 14 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Washington and Adams—Precedents in Action

Evaluate how Washington and Adams set lasting precedents—cabinet formation, neutrality, federal authority, and crisis management—shaping constitutional practice, civil liberties, and emerging party politics.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 13 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Ratification and the Bill of Rights

Explain ratification debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists and analyze key Bill of Rights amendments—their purposes, protections, and limits—in real-world civic contexts.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 12 (Grade 8 Social Studies): The Constitution and Federalism

Explore how the three branches, checks and balances, and federalism distribute power across federal, state, and local governments—and how real issues reveal shared, contested authority and constitutional limits.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 11 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Writing the Constitution

Explore how competing state interests and ideological tensions at the Constitutional Convention produced key compromises over representation, slavery and commerce, and executive selection—shaping the Constitution’s structure and influencing ratification.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 10 (Grade 8 Social Studies): From Articles to Constitution

Identify the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation and explain how debates over power led to the Constitution’s structured government—branches, checks and balances, and federalism—to create a stronger, more effective union.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 9 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Midyear Project—Creating an Independence Exhibit

Research and curate a public-facing “Independence Exhibit” that explains causes, effects, and global impacts of the American Revolution—using diverse primary/secondary sources, evidence-based claims, balanced perspectives, and clear citations.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 8 (Grade 8 Social Studies): The American Revolution—War and Strategy

Study how geography, logistics, blockades, and alliances shaped Revolutionary War strategy—from Saratoga to Yorktown—and argue which factors most decisively led to American victory.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 7 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Patriots, Loyalists, and Perspectives

Compare Patriot, Loyalist, and neutral perspectives across diverse colonial groups, evaluate source bias and credibility, and practice civic discourse through a town-hall style debate and evidence-based written/oral claims.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 6 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Ideas of Liberty and Natural Rights

Explore how Enlightenment ideals—natural rights, consent, rule of law, equality, and separation of powers—shaped colonial critiques of empire and inspired arguments for American independence.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 5 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Causes of the American Revolution

Trace how British war debt, new taxes, and escalating protests from 1763–1775 fueled colonial resistance; evaluate diverse perspectives and detect source bias on the road to revolution.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 4 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Roots of Self-Government

Compare early democratic institutions—town meetings, colonial assemblies, jury trials, and free press—to founding ideals like natural rights and consent of the governed, while examining who was included, excluded, and how these practices set the stage for the American Revolution.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 3 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Colonial Life and Regional Economies

Compare New England, Middle, and Southern colonies through geography, economy, religion, and culture—examining specialization, credit and taxation, and cause-and-effect relationships that shaped regional development in early America.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 2 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Indigenous Nations and European Encounters

Explore how Indigenous nations and early European settlers interacted through trade, cooperation, conflict, and changing relationships with land—analyzing diverse perspectives, environmental impacts, and emerging interdependence in early North America.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 1 (Grade 8 Social Studies): The Geography of Early America

Geography and climate shaped how the thirteen colonies settled, worked, and governed. In this Grade 8 social studies unit, students compare New England, Middle, and Southern colonies using maps, climate data, and primary sources.