Texas TEKS 8.25.B

Social Studies8th GradeCulture

The Standard

describe religious influences on social movements, including the impact of the first and second Great Awakenings

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies

Teacher's field guide

What This Standard Means

What Students Need to Do

Students explain how revival preaching shaped beliefs about equality, personal responsibility, and authority. They connect the First Great Awakening to colonial unity and challenges to authority, and the Second to abolition, temperance, and other reforms.

What Mastery Looks Like

Students can compare the two awakenings using specific beliefs, leaders, and results. They can trace a clear link from a religious idea to organized action and social change.

Common Misconceptions

Students often treat the two awakenings as one event or place both in the same period. They may name a reform movement without explaining how religious beliefs motivated its supporters.

How to Assess It

Give students this exit prompt: Explain one way each Great Awakening influenced society, and connect each influence to a specific belief or action.

Lesson moves

Ways to Teach It

  1. Give groups revival quotes, dates, and reform cards to sort into First Awakening, Second Awakening, belief, and social result.

  2. Ask students to write: When can a religious message lead people to challenge social rules or political authority?

  3. Play a matching relay where teams pair preachers, religious ideas, reform movements, and historical effects, then defend one match.

  4. Compare a historical faith-based reform group with a local religious charity, focusing on beliefs, goals, methods, and community impact.

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