Grades K-8 Page 100
Grade 8: Social Studies Practices
A. Gathering, Interpreting and Using Evidence
1. Define and frame questions about the United States and answer them by gathering, interpreting, and using
evidence.
2. Identify, describe, and evaluate evidence about events from diverse sources (including written documents,
works of art, photographs, charts and graphs, artifacts, oral traditions, and other primary and secondary
sources).
3. Analyze evidence in terms of historical and/or social context, content, authorship, point of view, purpose, and
format; identify bias; explain the role of bias, context and audience in presenting arguments or evidence.
4. Describe and analyze arguments of others, considering historical context.
5. Make inferences and draw conclusions from evidence.
6. Recognize an argument and identify evidence that supports the argument; examine arguments related to a
specific social studies topic from multiple perspectives; deconstruct arguments, recognizing the perspective of
the argument and identifying evidence used to support that perspective.
B. Chronological Reasoning
1. Articulate how events are related chronologically to one another in time, and explain the ways in which earlier
ideas and events may influence subsequent ideas and events.
2. Employ mathematical skills to measure time by years, decades, centuries, and millennia; to calculate time from
the fixed points of the calendar system (B.C. or B.C.E. and A.D. or C.E.); and to interpret the data presented in
time lines.
3. Identify causes and effects, using examples from current events, grade-level content, and historical events.
4. Identify, analyze, and evaluate the relationship between multiple causes and effects.
5. Distinguish between long-term and immediate causes and effects of an event from current events or history.
6. Recognize, analyze, and evaluate dynamics of historical continuity and change over periods of time.
7. Recognize that changing the periodization affects the historical narrative.
8. Relate patterns of continuity and change to larger historical processes and themes.
9. Identify and describe models of historical periodization that historians use to categorize events.
C. Comparison and Contextualization
1. Identify a region of the United States by describing multiple characteristics common to places within it, and
then identify other similar regions inside the United States.
2. Identify and compare multiple perspectives on a given historical experience.
3. Describe, compare, and evaluate multiple historical developments (within societies; across and between
societies; in various chronological and geographical contexts).
4. Describe the relationship between geography, economics, and history as a context for events and movements in
the United States.
5. Connect historical developments to specific circumstances of time and place and to broader regional, national,
or global processes.
6. Analyze case studies in United States history in a comparative framework, attending to the role of chronology
and sequence, as well as categories of comparison or socio-political components.
D. Geographic Reasoning
1. Use location terms and geographic representations, such as maps, photographs, satellite images, and models to
describe where places are in relation to each other and connections between places; evaluate the benefits of
particular places for purposeful activities.
2. Distinguish human activities and human-made features from “environments” (natural events or physical
features—land, air, and water—that are not directly made by humans) and describe the relationship between
human activities and the environment.
3. Identify and analyze how environments affect human activities and how human activities affect physical
environments in the United States.
4. Recognize and analyze how characteristics (cultural, economic, and physical-environmental) of regions affect
the history of the United States.