South Carolina Standards 7th Grade Social Studies Activities

SC.7-SSLS. Social Studies Literacy Skills for the Twenty-First Century

7-SSLS.1. Literacy Skills for Social Studies

7-SSLS.1.1. Identify and explain the relationships among multiple causes and multiple effects.

7-SSLS.1.13. Interpret Earth's physical and human systems by using maps, mental maps, geographic models, and other social studies resources.

7-SSLS.1.15. Explain how political, social, and economic institutions are similar or different across time and/or throughout the world.

7-SSLS.1.16. Explain how the endowment and development of productive resources affects economic decisions and global interactions.

7-SSLS.1.17. Apply economic decision making to understand how limited resources necessitate choices.

7-SSLS.1.18. Examine the costs and the benefits of economic choices made by a particular society and explain how those choices affect overall economic well-being.

7-SSLS.1.2. Explain why trade occurs and how historical patterns of trade have contributed to global interdependence.

7-SSLS.1.20. Explain how entrepreneurship and economic risk-taking promotes personal and social economic development in the past and the present.

7-SSLS.1.4. Identify the location of places, the conditions at places, and the connections between places.

7-SSLS.1.5. Explain change and continuity over time and across cultures.

7-SSLS.1.8. Interpret parallel time lines from different places and cultures.

7-SSLS.1.9. Compare the locations of places, the conditions at places, and the connections between places.

SC.7. Contemporary Cultures: 1600 to the Present

7-1: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the growth and impact of global trade on world civilizations after 1600.

European expansion during the 1600s and 1700s was often driven by economic and technological forces. To understand the influence of these forces, the student will utilize the knowledge and skills set forth in the following indicators:

7-1.1. Compare the colonial claims and the expansion of European powers through 1770.

7-2: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the concepts of limited government and unlimited government as they functioned in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The relationship between citizens and their government is a fundamental component of political rule. To understand the role of constitutions, the characteristics of shared powers, the protection of individual rights, and the promotion of the common good by government, the student will utilize the knowledge and skills set forth in the following indicators:

7-2.2. Explain how the scientific revolution challenged authority and influenced Enlightenment philosophers, including the importance of the use of reason, the challenges to the Catholic Church, and the contributions of Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton.

7-3: The student will demonstrate an understanding of independence movements that occurred throughout the world from 1770 through 1900.

The global spread of democratic ideas and nationalist movements occurred during the nineteenth century. To understand the effects of nationalism, industrialism, and imperialism, the student will utilize the knowledge and skills set forth in the following indicators:

7-3.1. Explain the causes, key events, and outcomes of the French Revolution, including the storming of the Bastille, the Reign of Terror, and Napoleon's rise to power.

7-3.2. Analyze the effects of the Napoleonic Wars on the development and spread of nationalism in Europe, including the Congress of Vienna, the revolutionary movements of 1830 and 1848, and the unification of Germany and Italy.

7-3.4. Explain how the Industrial Revolution caused economic, cultural, and political changes around the world.

7-3.7. Explain the causes and effects of the Spanish-American War as a reflection of American imperialist interests, including acquisitions, military occupations, and status as an emerging world power.

7-4: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the causes and effects of world conflicts in the first half of the twentieth century.

The influence of both world wars and the worldwide Great Depression are still evident. To understand the effects these events had on the modern world, the student will utilize the knowledge and skills set forth in the following indicators:

7-4.1. Explain the causes and course of World War I, including militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the impact of Russia's withdrawal from, and the United States entry into the war.

7-4.2. Explain the outcomes of World War I, including the creation of President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, the Treaty of Versailles, the shifts in national borders, and the League of Nations.

7-4.3. Explain the causes and effects of the worldwide depression that took place in the 1930s, including the effects of the economic crash of 1929.

7-4.4. Compare the ideologies of socialism, communism, fascism, and Nazism and their influence on the rise of totalitarian governments after World War I in Italy, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union as a response to the worldwide depression.

7-4.5. Summarize the causes and course of World War II, including drives for empire, appeasement and isolationism, the invasion of Poland, the Battle of Britain, the invasion of the Soviet Union, the "Final Solution," the Lend-Lease program, Pearl Harbor, Stalingrad, the campaigns in North Africa and the Mediterranean, the D-Day invasion, the island-hopping campaigns, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

7-4.6. Analyze the Holocaust and its impact on European society and Jewish culture, including Nazi policies to eliminate the Jews and other minorities, the Nuremberg trials, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the rise of nationalism in Southwest Asia (Middle East), the creation of the state of Israel, and the resultant conflicts in the region.

7-5: The student will demonstrate an understanding of international developments during the Cold War era.

Events during the Cold War affected the world politically, socially, and economically. To understand the significance of the Cold War, the student will utilize the knowledge and skills set forth in the following indicators:

7-5.1. Compare the political and economic ideologies of the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

7-5.2. Summarize the impact of the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United Nations, and the Warsaw Pact on the course of the Cold War.

7-5.3. Explain the spread of communism in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, including the ideas of the satellite state containment, and the domino theory.

7-5.4. Analyze the political and technological competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for global influence, including the Korean Conflict, the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis, the "space race," and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

7-6: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the significant political, economic, geographic, scientific, technological, and cultural changes as well as the advancements that have taken place throughout the world from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the present day.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the world's attention no longer focuses on the tension between superpowers. Although problems rooted in the Middle East have captured the world's attention more consistently than the majority of current issues, other concerns have moved to the forefront as well. To understand the modern world, the student will utilize the knowledge and skills set forth in the following indicators:

7-6.2. Compare features of nationalist and independence movements in different regions in the post-World War II period, including Mohandas Gandhi's role in the non-violence movement for India's independence, the emergence of nationalist movements in African and Asian countries, and the collapse of the apartheid system in South Africa.

7-6.3. Explain the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, including the Persian Gulf War, the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

7-6.6. Summarize the dangers to the natural environment that are posed by population growth, urbanization, and industrialization, including global influences on the environment and the efforts by citizens and governments to protect the natural environment.

SC.CC.RH.6-8. Reading Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies

Craft and Structure

RH.6-8.4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

RH.6-8.5. Describe how a text presents information (e.g., sequentially, comparatively, causally).

Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

RH.6-8.10. By the end of grade 8, read and comprehend history/social studies texts in the grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.