Grade 8 Social Studies has an emphasis on United States history from 1801 expansion and reform to 1900 industrial America. The desired outcome of this course is for students to develop an understanding of the cause-and-effect relationship between events, recognize patterns of interactions, and understand the impact of events in the United States within an interconnected world. The history of the United States during the nineteenth century includes the integration of social, political, economic, and geographic components. The history strand in Grade 8 is organized chronologically using the eras and time periods from The National Center for History in the Schools. Civics/government, economics, and geography should be embedded into instructional units that correlate with the historic eras under study.