Oklahoma Social Studies AWH.C.7.8
The Standard
Explain how internal forces (e.g., the rise of autonomous military powers, political corruption, and economic and political instability) and external forces (e.g., shrinking trade, attacks, and invasions) led to the disintegration of the Roman Empire.
Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies (2026)
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify pressures from inside and outside the Western Roman Empire. They explain how weak central rule, military leaders, shrinking trade, and invasions made one another harder to manage.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can explain how shrinking trade reduced tax revenue and made troops harder to pay. They can show how invasions added to those problems and distinguish western Rome's fall from the Eastern Empire's survival.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may blame one invasion or one corrupt emperor for Rome's fall. Some think the whole empire ended in 476, though the Eastern Empire continued. Others miss how shrinking trade and weaker defenses could make each other worse.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Draw arrows connecting shrinking trade, falling tax revenue, weaker defenses, and invasions. Explain two of your arrows in writing.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs cards labeled shrinking trade, lost taxes, unpaid soldiers, and invasions; have them build two cause-and-effect chains.
Ask: Which hurt western Rome more, generals acting independently or invading armies? Require one link between the two in each answer.
Play a card sort: label 'general ignores emperor,' 'trade slows,' and 'border raid' as internal or external pressures, then justify each choice.
Show a city budget with falling sales taxes and rising emergency costs; ask how that squeeze resembles Rome's trouble funding troops.
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Related Standards
- AWH.C.10.3.B
partial disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire and the rise of independent city-states in Italy and Germany
- MWH.C.6.2.B
Explain post-war political instability (e.g., collapse of the Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian Empires).
- AWH.C.7.5
Describe the collapse of the Roman Republic from the agrarian reform law of Tiberius Gracchus to the establishment of Julius Caesar’s dictatorship.
- AWH.C.7.6
Explain the reasons for the growth and longevity of the Roman Empire (e.g., military organization, tactics, conquests, functions of taxes, use of a standard cur...
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