Alabama Social Studies SS24.6.7e
The Standard
- SS24.6.7
- Identify causes and events leading to the War for Independence, including salutary neglect, the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Intolerable Acts, Virginia Convention (1775), and the Declaration of Independence, and describe how these events escalated tension between the colonies and Great Britain.
Define the key principles contained in the Declaration of Independence, including inalienable rights, equality, and social contract, and explain how they have been presented in significant statements of belief throughout United States history to the present.
2024 Alabama Course of Study: Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students explain that people have rights by birth, people deserve equal treatment, and government gets power from the people to protect their rights. They trace these ideas through later speeches and writings.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students can explain all three ideas in their own words. Given a passage from the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments or John Lewis’s 2020 essay, they can name an idea it uses and explain the writer’s argument.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think a claim of equality means everyone had equal rights in 1776. They may think government gives people their basic rights, or that a social contract is a paper people sign.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Define rights by birth, equality, and consent of the governed in one sentence each. Then explain how the phrase “all men and women are created equal” in the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments argues for change.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Pin excerpt strips from the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments, Gettysburg Address, and John Lewis’s 2020 essay onto a timeline; label each idea.
Ask partners, “How does the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments use equality to argue for women’s rights?”
Play a quote relay: teams match lines from the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments to rights, equality, or consent, then justify one match.
Show a state voter registration form and ask students why rules about who can vote matter for consent of the governed.
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Related Standards
- SS24.4.6c
Summarize the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
- SS24.2.1b
Identify American principles found within the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
- SS24.US1.1c
Summarize the main arguments within the Declaration of Independence, its rationale for separation from Great Britain, and its ideas of equality, liberty, natura...
- SS24.CWI.8b
Describe key rights and beliefs related to human rights as embedded in the Declaration of Independence, Geneva Conventions, and the Universal Declaration of Hum...
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