Period One Themes
Focus: The formation of both American national identity and group identities in U.S. history.
- Explain how various identities, cultures, and values have been preserved or changed in different contexts of U.S. history, with special attention given to the formation of gender, class, racial, and ethnic identities.
- Explain how these subidentities have interacted with each other and with larger conceptions of American national identity.
Overarching Question:
- How have gender, class, ethnic, religious, regional, and other group identities changed in different eras?
Theme: Peopling
Focus: Why and how the various people who moved to, from, and within the United States adapted to their new social and physical environments.
- Examine migration across borders and long distances, including the slave trade and internal migration, and how both newcomers and indigenous inhabitants transformed North America.
- Understand how people responded when “borders crossed them.”
- Explore ideas, beliefs, traditions, technologies, religions, and gender roles that migrants/immigrants and annexed peoples brought with them and the impact these factors had on both these peoples and on U.S. society.
Overarching Questions:
- Why have people migrated to, from, and within
North America?
- How have changes in migration and population patterns affected American life?
Theme: Environment/Geography (Physical & Human)
Focus: The role of environment, geography, and climate in both constraining and shaping human actions.
- Analyze the interaction between the environment and Americans in their efforts to survive and thrive.
- Explore efforts to interpret, preserve, manage, or exploit natural and man-made environments, as well as the historical contexts within which interactions with the environment have taken place.
Overarching questions:
- How did interactions with the natural environment shape the institutions and values of various groups living in the North American continent?
- How did economic and demographic changes affect the environment and lead to debates over use and control of the environment and natural resources?
Theme: Ideas, Belief, Culture
Focus: The roles that ideas, beliefs, social mores, and creative expression have played in shaping the United States.
- Examine the development of aesthetic, moral, religious, scientific, and philosophical principles and consider how these principles have affected individual and group actions.
- Analyze the interactions between beliefs and communities, economic values, and political movements, including attempts to change American society to align it with specific ideals.
Overarching question: How and why have moral, philosophical, and cultural values changed in what would become the United States?
Theme: Work, Exchange, Technology
Focus: The development of American economies based on agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing.
Overarching Questions:
Theme: Politics and Power
Focus: Ongoing debates over the role of the state in society and its potential as an active agent for change.
Overarching questions:
Theme: America in the World
Focus: The global context in which the United States originated and developed as well as the influence of the United States on world affairs.
Overarching question: How have events in North America and the United States related to contemporary developments in the rest of the world?
Focus: The development of American economies based on agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing.
- Examine ways that different economic and labor systems, technological innovations, and government policies have shaped American society.
- Explore the lives of working people and the relationships among social classes, racial and ethnic groups, men and women, including the availability of land and labor, national and international economic developments, and the role of government support and regulation.
Overarching Questions:
- How have changes in markets, transportation, and technology affected American society from colonial times to the present day?
- Why have different labor systems developed in British North America and the United States, and how have they affected U.S. society?
Theme: Politics and Power
Focus: Ongoing debates over the role of the state in society and its potential as an active agent for change.
- Understand mechanisms for creating, implementing, or limiting participation in the political process and the resulting social effects, as well as the changing relationships among the branches of the federal government and among national, state, and local governments
- Trace efforts to define or gain access to individual rights and citizenship and survey the evolutions of tensions between liberty and authority in different periods of U.S. history.
Overarching questions:
- How and why have different political and social groups competed for influence over society and government in what would become the United States?
- How have Americans agreed on or argued over the values that guide the political system as well as who is part of the political process?
Theme: America in the World
Focus: The global context in which the United States originated and developed as well as the influence of the United States on world affairs.
- Examine how various world actors (such as people, states, organizations, and companies) have competed for the territory and resources of the North American continent, influencing the development of both American and world societies and economies.
- Investigate how American foreign policies and military actions have affected the rest of the world as well as social issues within the United States itself.
Overarching question: How have events in North America and the United States related to contemporary developments in the rest of the world?