The Junior High history curriculum is divided between World History (6), U.S. History (7), and Church History (8). It is designed to impress in the student’s memory the significant people, events, and geography of history, while building the skills of memorization, timeline construction, geographical mapping, and the study of cause and effect.
Students are encouraged to “think like a historian,” which entails asking a set of questions with regard to historical events. They begin this process by learning to read critically through inquiry-based reading. Students also analyze concrete “artifacts” and images to glean historical data through observation and analysis. In 8th grade, students complete a personalized research project utilizing the analytical and composition skills of the last three years.
History 6
Students in History 6 acquire a broad understanding of world history, from prehistory to the beginnings of the modern era. Geography, prehistory, ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and the Enlightenment are covered.
Most readings come from the textbook All Ye Lands: Origins of World Cultures (Catholic Schools Textbook Project), while some primary sources are included. The focus of the 6th grade World History class is primarily grammar stage and the learning of content.
Students will, as a matter of course, discuss the motivations and implications of major historical figures and events, but assessment focuses largely on memorization of data and basic composition. In keeping with the English writing curriculum, composition focuses on the construction of detailed sentences, summary, and re-telling.
To read more about the goals, topics, and skills students learn, click the link below!
History 7
7th grade focuses on U.S. history through the end of the nineteenth century using From Sea to Shining Sea (Catholic Schools Textbook Project). The text is enriched with a concentration on civics, state and local history, and the history of the Church in the United States.
History 7 continues the grammar stage emphasis on memorizing historical figures, events, and places but augments that approach by encouraging students to compose more thorough historical definitions. They accomplish this by asking the journalist’s questions, “thinking like a historian,” discerning between history and historical memory, and developing basic skills of historical research.
Although students are being slowly introduced to analysis in this grade, there remains an emphasis on individual actors, the choices they made, and the virtues they exhibited, or failed to exhibit. Primary sources include founding documents like The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States along with Washington’s Rules of Civility and The Gettysburg Address plus many others from Benjamin Franklin, to Thomas Paine, to the journals of Lewis and Clark.
To read more about the goals, topics, and skills students learn, click the link below!
History 8
History 8, using Light of the Nations (Catholic Schools Textbook Project), studies the history of the Church from its founding to the present, emphasizing how the Church has preached the Gospel to the nations through the centuries and how the Church has bestowed treasures of art, literature, music, knowledge, and learning on the world.
Special emphasis is placed on the human desire to know and love God in a historical context. In the 8th grade, students refine the 5 Themes of Geography: Location, Place, Human-Environment Interaction, Movement, and Region they practiced in History 7. They are challenged to a greater degree because they now encounter more primary sources that are written at a higher reading level in terms of vocabulary, syntax, and thematic complexity.
They are required to work more explicitly from their class notes and build the skill of writing summaries, or precis, of what they read. 8th grade history also includes a significant research project developing their skills as historians, researchers, and writers.