Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Explore Grade 8 Social Studies unit plans with standards-aligned lessons that build historical thinking, civic literacy, and real-world analysis skills.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 36 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Cumulative Synthesis & Exhibition

Show what you know through exhibits, debates, and timelines that connect freedom, conflict, and progress across U.S. history—using evidence, maps, and civic reasoning to explain change and propose informed action.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 35 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Legacy of Reconstruction and Civic Struggle

Reconstruction reshaped race, citizenship, and justice—expanding rights through the 13th–15th Amendments while Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, courts, and civic resistance contested equality.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 34 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Economic Recovery and Sharecropping

Investigate how the postwar South rebuilt through sharecropping, tenant farming, and the crop-lien credit system—and how land use, soil, and market access shaped persistent debt and regional specialization.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 33 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Rights and the Reconstruction Amendments

Analyze the 13th–15th Amendments—their promises of freedom, citizenship, and voting rights—and how courts, states, and communities expanded or restricted those rights.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 32 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Reconstruction Plans and Politics

Compare Presidential and Congressional Reconstruction—their goals, powers, and outcomes—and analyze how checks & balances, federalism, and citizen participation shaped post-Civil War change.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 31 (Grade 8 Social Studies): The War’s End and Immediate Aftermath

Trace how surrender terms, Lincoln’s assassination, and post-war devastation shaped spring–summer 1865—impacting communities, migration, and the first steps toward Reconstruction.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 30 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Turning Points and the Emancipation Proclamation

Evaluate how leadership choices and the Emancipation Proclamation reshaped the Civil War—redefining war aims, influencing major campaigns, and shifting constitutional, political, and diplomatic outcomes.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 29 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Life During the Civil War

Explore how soldiers, civilians, and enslaved people experienced the Civil War, highlighting civic action, scarcity, and economic trade-offs that shaped daily life and choices.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 28 (Grade 8 Social Studies): The Civil War Begins

Analyze how secession, early battles, and geographic and resource differences shaped Union and Confederate strategies—revealing why terrain, rivers, rail, and industry influenced early Civil War outcomes.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 27 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Midyear Synthesis—Expansion to Division Timeline Project

Connect geography, economic change, and political conflict in a visual timeline showing how territorial growth, infrastructure, and market shifts drove the United States from expansion toward sectional division and war.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 26 (Grade 8 Social Studies): The Road to War

Trace how key events from 1850–1860—from Fugitive Slave Act to John Brown’s raid and Lincoln’s election—escalated sectional tensions, reshaped politics, and drove the nation toward war.

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Grade 8 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 25 (Grade 8 Social Studies): Sectionalism and Compromise

Analyze how slavery and politics split the U.S., and why the Missouri Compromise, Compromise of 1850, and Kansas–Nebraska Act delayed yet deepened sectional conflict.

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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.