Indiana Social Studies 8.H.26

Social Studies8th GradeHistory

The Standard

Using primary and secondary sources, analyze an issue confronting the United States from colonial times through the Reconstruction period.

2026 Indiana Academic Standards: K-12 Social Studies

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students investigate slavery and freedom from colonial times through Reconstruction. They use documents from the time and a historian's account to explain what changed and what did not.
What Mastery Looks Like: Students use a colonial law, an emancipation document, and a Reconstruction law to explain changes in legal rights. They cite details from each source and explain what a historian's account adds.
Common Misconceptions: Students may think the Emancipation Proclamation freed every enslaved person immediately. They may treat a firsthand account as automatically accurate or assume a historian's later account cannot be useful.
How to Assess It: Give students a short excerpt from Mississippi's 1865 vagrancy law and a textbook summary of the Black Codes. Ask them to identify the primary source and cite one restriction the law documents.

Lesson moves

Give pairs excerpts from the 1705 Virginia Slave Codes, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, and 1865 Mississippi Black Codes to place on a timeline and annotate.
Ask students: How did the 1865 Mississippi Black Codes limit freedom after emancipation, and what does a historian's account add?
Play source match with excerpts from a law, a speech, and a historian's account; students defend each match using a clue.
Compare the National Archives' online summary of the Thirteenth Amendment with its scanned text, then write what the summary leaves out.

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