Reconstruction after Civil War (1865 – 1876)
Amendments 13 –
Amendment 14 –
Amendment 15 –
Poll taxes –
Literacy tests –
Grandfather Clauses –
Ku Klux Klan –
Jim Crow Laws –
Black Codes –
Plessy v. Ferguson –
Segregation –
Industrial Explosion (approximately 1865 – 1914)
Transcontinental Railroad –
Assembly Line –
Henry Ford –
Free Enterprise System –
Monopolies / Trusts –
John D. Rockefeller –
Andrew Carnegie –
Thomas Edison –
Alexander Graham Bell –
Orville and Wilber Wright –
Economics –
Laissez Faire –
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire –
8th grade Social Studies
curriculum unit topics
& essential vocabulary
Immigration –
Push Factors –
Pull Factors –
Irish Potato Famine –
Ellis Island –
Angel Island –
Statue of Liberty –
Quota System –
Progressive Era (approximately 1870s – 1900)
Gilded Age –
Muckrakers –
The Jungle –
Jacob Riis –
Susan B. Anthony –
W.E.B. Dubois & the NAACP –
Booker T. Washington and his Tuskegee Institute –
Temperance Movement –
Theodore Roosevelt –
Imperialism –
Panama Canal –
Sphere of Influence in China –
Open Door Policy –
The Spanish-American War (1898) –
Yellow Journalism –
Roosevelt Corollary –
8th grade Social Studies
curriculum unit topics
& essential vocabulary
WWI (1914 – 1918)
Causes of WWI –
Trench Warfare –
Lusitania –
Zimmerman Telegram –
Propaganda –
U.S. on the home front –
Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points –
League of Nations –
Treaty of Versailles –
“Roaring” 1920s
Harlem Renaissance –
Prohibition –
Suffrage Jazz –
Red Scare & Quota System –
Stock Market Crash of 1929 –
The Great Depression Causes of Great Depression –
Unemployment –
Hoovervilles –
Dust Bowl –
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats –
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal –
8th grade Social Studies
curriculum unit topics
& essential vocabulary
WWII (1939 – 1941 - 1945)
Lend Lease & Cash and Carry –
Pearl Harbor –
US on the home front:
Rosie the Riveter –
Japanese Interment Camps –
Propaganda –
Rationing / Ration booklets –
Dwight Eisenhower –
Holocaust –
Nuremburg Trials –
UN, United Nations –
Cold War (1945 – 1991)
Cold War Truman Doctrine –
Containment –
Marshall Plan –
Domino Theory or Domino Effect –
N.A.T.O. –
Berlin Airlift –
Korean War (1950 – 1953) –
Cuban Missile Crisis –
Korean War –
Vietnam War –
Space Race –
8th grade Social Studies
curriculum unit topics
& essential vocabulary
Civil Rights Era (1950s & 1960s)
Civil Rights –
Segregation –
Civil Disobedience –
Montgomery Bus Boycott –
Rosa Parks –
8th grade Social Studies
curriculum unit topics
& essential vocabulary
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas –
Little Rock, Arkansas –
March on Washington –
Martin Luther King Jr. –
John F. Kennedy –
1970s
President Lyndon B. Johnson –
President Nixon and Watergate –
1980s
Ronald Reagan –
1990s
Persian Gulf War –
President William Clinton –
2000s
Terrorism –
Foreign Trade –
Pollution –
Technology –
Government spending & debt –
Concepts and skills practiced
throughout the units include:
 Creating and interpreting
graphs, diagrams, charts, and
timelines
 Geography
 Research
 Analyzing quotes
 Document Based Questions
 Answering thesis questions with
supportive evidence in essay
format