Alabama Social Studies SS24.3.8a
The Standard
- SS24.3.8
- Describe Indigenous cultures, governments, and economies in the Southeast prior to European colonization.
Identify changes that took place in prehistoric/pre-contact cultures in the Southeast between the Paleo, Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods.
2024 Alabama Course of Study: Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students put four periods of Southeastern history in order. They compare how people got food, made tools and containers, and lived in groups before European contact.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students connect mobile hunting with Paleo groups, varied hunting and fishing with Archaic groups, and growing pottery use with Woodland groups. They explain how maize farming and large towns marked many Mississippian communities.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think each period ended overnight or that all groups changed in the same way. They may assume pottery appeared only in the Mississippian period or that every mound was built then.
How to Assess It
- On an exit ticket, have students order the four periods and describe two changes in food or settlement across the timeline.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs picture cards of spear points, fishing nets, pottery, and corn fields, then have them place each on a four-period timeline.
Ask, “How did food sources and settlements change over time?” Have students use two details from their timeline in a written answer.
Play four corners: read clues about food or settlements, then have students choose a period and explain what changed from the one before it.
Show a photo of Moundville in Alabama and ask which period its large town and platform mounds represent.
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Printable SS24.3.8a Worksheet
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Related Standards
- SS24.3.8
Describe Indigenous cultures, governments, and economies in the Southeast prior to European colonization.
- SS24.6.1a
Compare the political and social structures of Southeastern Woodland Indigenous peoples and those of another region of North America.
- SS24.3.8b
Describe key characteristics of different tribes in Alabama in the Mississippian Period, contrasting social customs, political organization, and religious pract...
- SS24.8.6
Describe key aspects and figures of Indigenous societies during the Postclassic Period in Mesoamerica and the Andean region and the Mississippian Period in Nort...
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