6th grade Social Studies
14 units matched to the Alabama Course of Study.
Focus areas
- Course: Making a New Nation: United States Beginnings and Civic Foundations
- Colonization of North America
- The American Revolution
- Creating a government, and citizens' rights and responsibilities
Units
Unit 1
The Columbian Exchange
The plants, animals, people, ideas and diseases that crossed the Atlantic after 1492, sugar plantations, and the transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage, told factually, with how enslaved Africans resisted and kept their cultures alive.
Content standard: 6.3; 6.6 · the Columbian Exchange and the triangular trade, and their effects on peoples of the Americas and Africa
Unit 2
The Thirteen Colonies
Why the colonies were founded, how land and climate shaped the three regions, the people who founded them, the religious life of the colonies and the First Great Awakening, and early self-government such as the Mayflower Compact and the House of Burgesses.
Content standard: 6.4; 6.5 · the New England, Middle and Southern colonies, and colonies founded for religious freedom
Unit 3
Colonial Trade & Work
Resources, specialization and trade in the colonies, mercantilism, and the Atlantic slave trade and its impact on African peoples, told plainly and age-appropriately.
Content standard: 6.4; 6.6 · work and trade in the colonies, and the triangular trade
Unit 4
Road to Revolution
British taxes, colonial protests such as boycotts and the Boston Tea Party, the Continental Congresses, and why Loyalists and Patriots saw things differently.
Content standard: 6.7 · the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and the Intolerable Acts
Unit 5
The American Revolution
The Declaration of Independence and its ideals, key battles from Lexington to Yorktown, help from France and others, and the people of many backgrounds who shaped the war.
Content standard: 6.7; 6.8; 6.9 · the Declaration of Independence, the battles of the war and why the colonies won
Unit 6
Building a Government
Why the Articles of Confederation were replaced, the compromises of 1787, the three branches, checks and balances, federalism and the Bill of Rights (1791).
Content standard: 6.10; 6.11 · the Articles of Confederation and the compromises of the Constitutional Convention
Unit 7
Founding Ideals
The Magna Carta, English Bill of Rights and Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the debates of 1787, the Federalist Papers, and the principles of the Constitution.
Content standard: 6.12; 6.13 · the ideas and earlier governments behind the Constitution, and its main principles
Unit 8
Rights & Amendments
What the first ten amendments protect, the Reconstruction Amendments, and why rights come with limits and responsibilities.
Content standard: 6.17 · the rights in the Bill of Rights and later amendments, and how citizens use them
Unit 9
Taking Part
Ways to take part before and after 18, volunteering and civil society, petitions and peaceful protest, deliberating about tensions in our democracy, and checking news for reliability.
Content standard: 6.18 · ways citizens take part and influence government
Unit 10
North America Before Contact
Major Indigenous societies of North America before European contact: the Mississippian mound builders of Moundville and Cahokia, Ancestral Puebloans, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, nations of the Great Plains, and the nations of the Southeast, many of which are living nations today.
Content standard: 6.1 · major Indigenous societies of North America before European contact
Unit 11
Explorers & Colonizers
Why Spain, France and England explored and colonized North America (mercantilism, religion, wealth and new opportunities), the expeditions that reached Alabama, and the effects on Indigenous peoples.
Content standard: 6.2; 6.3 · reasons for British, French and Spanish colonization, and its effects on Indigenous peoples
Unit 12
Choosing Our Leaders
How the Constitution and its amendments set up the selection of leaders: the Electoral College, terms of office, Alabama's senators, representatives and electoral votes, and the amendments that widened the right to vote.
Content standard: 6.14 · how political leaders are selected under the Constitution and its amendments
Unit 13
Federalism in Alabama
How federalism divides power between the national government and the states, and between Alabama and its counties and cities, and how the legislative, executive and judicial branches work at each level.
Content standard: 6.15; 6.16 · federalism, and the branches of government at the national, state and local levels
Unit 14
A New Nation
George Washington's presidency (the first Cabinet, the new capital in the District of Columbia, religious freedom), and the rise of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties in the 1790s.
Content standard: 6.19; 6.20 · George Washington's presidency, and the first political parties
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