Self-Paced Middle School American History

History is not about raw memorization of names, dates, and events. In the WriteAtHome Middle School American History course, the details of history are used to make cause-and-effect sense of why our world is the way it is. This class will focus on giving students a timeline frame of reference for major events and introduce some of the people involved in those events. This course surveys American History from the Exploration of the New World to the late 20th Century, with a strong emphasis on the American Founding through the Civil War and Reconstruction.

We will cover such topics as

• Types of North American colonies and their interaction with Native communities
• The contrast of colonial life and culture and European culture
• The First Great Awakening, the path to Independence and the Revolutionary War
• The framing of the Constitution, presidents and major events
• Westward expansion, the Industrial Revolution, the Second Great Awakening, divisions in the country before the Civil War
• Secession and the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Age of Industry
• The turn of the Twentieth Century, World War I, the 1920s before the stock market crash, The Great Depression, World War II, societal change in America during the Cold War

About Self-Paced Classes:

• Students have access to recorded lectures on each reading assignment.
• Students have access to weekly reading pacing guides and auto-graded quizzes.
• Although we recommend following the syllabus in order, students are free to choose what to read and when.
• Self-Paced classes do not include live class sessions or teacher support. 
• All recordings will be available from September 2 through the end of the following August.

Required Reading:

The weekly required reading will be assembled from various articles, primary sources, and textbooks available for free online, with links provided in the weekly required reading section of Canvas. The reading will be mostly synchronous with the weekly lessons.

Suggested Booklist:

If you prefer a physical copy of a book in addition to the online resources provided, we will also give weekly reading suggestions from the WriteAtHome High School History class textbook, Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People.