Standards for The full text of The Declaration of Independence with audio

Distinguish the responsibilities and powers of government officials at various levels and branches of government and in different times and places.

Distinguish the powers and responsibilities of citizens, political parties, interest groups, and the media in a variety of governmental and nongovernmental contexts.

Distinguish the powers and responsibilities of local, state, tribal, national, and international civic and political institutions.

Describe roles and responsibilities of people in authority.

Explain how a democracy relies on people's responsible participation, and draw implications for how individuals should participate.

Explain specific roles played by citizens (such as voters, jurors, taxpayers, members of the armed forces, petitioners, protesters, and office-holders).

Analyze the role of citizens in the U.S. political system, with attention to various theories of democracy, changes in Americans' participation over time, and alternative models from other countries, past and present.

Explain how all people, not just official leaders, play important roles in a community.

Examine the origins and purposes of rules, laws, and key U.S. constitutional provisions.

Examine the origins, purposes, and impact of constitutions, laws, treaties, and international agreements.

Analyze the impact of constitutions, laws, treaties, and international agreements on the maintenance of national and international order.

Explain the need for and purposes of rules in various settings inside and outside of school.

Create and use a chronological sequence of related events to compare developments that happened at the same time.

Analyze connections among events and developments in broader historical contexts.

Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.

Create a chronological sequence of multiple events.

Infer the intended audience and purpose of a historical source from information within the source itself.

Use other historical sources to infer a plausible maker, date, place of origin, and intended audience for historical sources where this information is not easily identified.

Critique the usefulness of historical sources for a specific historical inquiry based on their maker, date, place of origin, intended audience, and purpose.

Identify the maker, date, and place of origin for a historical source from information within the source itself.

Generate questions about multiple historical sources and their relationships to particular historical events and developments.

Generate questions about a particular historical source as it relates to a particular historical event or development.

Explain probable causes and effects of events and developments.

Explain multiple causes and effects of events and developments in the past.

Analyze multiple and complex causes and effects of events in the past.

Evaluate the relative influence of various causes of events and developments in the past.

Distinguish between long-term causes and triggering events in developing a historical argument.

Select which reasons might be more likely than others to explain a historical event or development.

Classify series of historical events and developments as examples of change and/or continuity.

Generate questions about individuals and groups who have shaped significant historical changes and continuities.

Use questions generated about individuals and groups to analyze why they, and the developments they shaped, are seen as historically significant.

Use questions generated about individuals and groups to assess how the significance of their actions changes over time and is shaped by the historical context.

Generate questions about individuals and groups who have shaped a significant historical change.

Explain why individuals and groups during the same historical period differed in their perspectives.

Describe how people's perspectives shaped the historical sources they created.

Analyze how people's perspectives influenced what information is available in the historical sources they created.

Analyze the ways in which the perspectives of those writing history shaped the history that they produced.

Summarize how different kinds of historical sources are used to explain events in the past.

Identify different kinds of historical sources.

Generate possible reasons for an event or development in the past.