Oklahoma Social Studies 5.C.5.1
The Standard
- 5.C.5
- Examine the formation of the United States of America’s system of government following the American Revolution.
Evaluate the major issues that led to the Constitutional Convention, including the public alarm raised from Shays’ Rebellion and challenges faced by a national government too weak to conduct its affairs.
Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies (2026) · 5.C.5
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify problems the national government could not solve under the Articles of Confederation, such as collecting taxes directly or regulating trade between states. They explain why Shays’ Rebellion worried leaders, then weigh which problem made change most urgent.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can explain that Congress could ask states for money but could not make them pay. They can describe the farmers’ uprising in Massachusetts and use both facts to argue why leaders met to change the government.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think Shays’ Rebellion was a war against the national government or that a federal army stopped it. They may also think Congress could collect taxes but chose not to.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Which worried leaders more, Congress’s inability to collect taxes or Shays’ Rebellion? Use one fact about each to defend your choice.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups paper coins and state cards, then let each state decide whether to pay Congress’s request for war debt money.
Ask: Why would a farmers’ protest in Massachusetts worry leaders in other states?
Sort cards labeled unpaid war debts, tax requests, state tariffs, trade disputes, farm foreclosures, and Shays’ Rebellion into money, trade, or unrest piles.
Set up a shared pencil fund that groups may choose not to pay into, then ask how the class will buy pencils.
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Related Standards
- 8.C.3.1.C
Describe how severe economic conditions and civil unrest, typified by Shays’ Rebellion, contributed to a call for revision of the Articles of Confederation.
- 8.C.3.2
Analyze the significance of the Constitutional Convention on the formation of a new organization for national government.
- 5.C.5.3
Read, discuss, and explain the Declaration of Independence and how it has shaped the United States of America. Explain the key debates and compromises of the Co...
- 8.C.3.1
Examine conditions in the new nation that led to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787
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