Jr. High Social Studies

6th-8th Grade Current Events
All classes learn about “living history”. Ninety minutes each week, students watch news clips of recent events, discuss the news stories, and fill in short questions about them in a weekly quiz. the student work packet also includes map assignments, famous people menioned, and vocabulary words. Students have vocabulary quizzes periodically to help them prepar for their mid-term and final exams.

*Grade 6 Social Studies: The Eastern Hemisphere
~Regions of the World
~Physical Regions
~Human Regions
~Culture
~Why study culture?
~How we study culture
~Early Human Life
~The Physical Geography of Europe
~Ancient History of Europe
~Modern Europe
~Physical Geography of Africa
~Ancient History of Africa
~Modern Africa
~Physical Geography of Asia
~Ancient History of Asia
~Modern Asia

Grades 7 & 8 Social Studies: U.S. History
~Earliest Americans
~European Exploration
~African Life before the 16th Century
~The Columbian Exchange
~Europeans Struggle for Control of North America
~The European Slave Trade and Slavery in Colonial America
~Life in Colonial America
~Colonial Williamsburg
~Causes of the American Revolution
~The American Revolution and Its Consequences
~Creating the New Government
~The New Constitution
~Challenges to a New Nation
~The Jeffersonian Era
~The Louisiana Purchase (Corps of Discovery)
~Foreign and Domestic Conflict
~The Monroe Doctrine
~The War of 1812
~The Indian Removal Act (Trail of Tears)
~The Movement West
~Mexican/American War
~The Reform Movements
~Antebellum Period
~The Civil War
~Reconstruction

The above topics are what are to be covered through the standards set by the Diocese of Grand Rapids. My goal is to study all of those topics, and then continue the study of American History through the Second World War. In the classroom, we do many hands-on activities and note-taking, that will give the students practice for note-taking in the future.