Search the California Content Standards

Overarching Standard:
HSS-1.3 Students know and understand the symbols, icons, and traditions of the United States that provide continuity and a sense of community across time.

Standard:
Identify American symbols, landmarks, and essential documents, such as the flag, bald eagle, Statue of Liberty, U.S. Constitution, and Declaration of Independence, and know the people and events associated with them.

Overarching Standard:
HSS-3.4 Students understand the role of rules and laws in our daily lives and the basic structure of the U.S. government.

Standard:
Know the histories of important local and national landmarks, symbols, and essential documents that create a sense of community among citizens and exemplify cherished ideals (e.g., the U.S. flag, the bald eagle, the Statue of Liberty, the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Capitol).

Overarching Standard:
HSS-5.5 Students explain the causes of the American Revolution.

Standard:
Understand the people and events associated with the drafting and signing of the Declaration of Independence and the document’s significance, including the key political concepts it embodies, the origins of those concepts, and its role in severing ties with Great Britain.

Overarching Standard:
HSS-5.6 Students understand the course and consequences of the American Revolution.

Standard:
Understand how the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence changed the way people viewed slavery.

Overarching Standard:
HSS-7.11 Students analyze political and economic change in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries (the Age of Exploration, the Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason).

Standard:
Discuss how the principles in the Magna Carta were embodied in such documents as the English Bill of Rights and the American Declaration of Independence.

Overarching Standard:
HSS-8.1 Students understand the major events preceding the founding of the nation and relate their significance to the development of American constitutional democracy.

Standard:
Analyze the philosophy of government expressed in the Declaration of Independence, with an emphasis on government as a means of securing individual rights (e.g., key phrases such as “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”).

Overarching Standard:
HSS-8.10 Students analyze the multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War.

Standard:
Discuss Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and his significant writings and speeches and their relationship to the Declaration of Independence, such as his “House Divided” speech (1858), Gettysburg Address (1863), Emancipation Proclamation (1863), and inaugural addresses (1861 and 1865).

Overarching Standard:
HSS-8.2 Students analyze the political principles underlying the U.S. Constitution and compare the enumerated and implied powers of the federal government.

Standard:
Analyze the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution and the success of each in implementing the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

Standard:
Students analyze the early and steady attempts to abolish slavery and to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

Overarching Standard:
HSS-8.9 Students analyze the early and steady attempts to abolish slavery and to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

Standard:
Describe the leaders of the movement (e.g., John Quincy Adams and his proposed constitutional amendment, John Brown and the armed resistance, Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, Benjamin Franklin, Theodore Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass).