American Republic Teacher Edition, 5th ed.

The 8th grade history teacher’s edition provides two volumes of resources and suggestions for guiding students through the middle school American history course. Additional resources, activities, and discussion notes provided in the teacher’s edition help develop the students’ critical thinking skills so they can see and interpret history according to a biblical worldview.

What do the lesson plans include?

The teaching cycle follows four steps:

• Engage: suggestions for completing visual analyses of maps, graphs, pictures, as well as discussion questions and guides for discussing biblical worldview shaping themes are designed to get students engaged and thinking about their history.
• Instruct: Teaching notes provide a starting place for teaching complicated topics in American history. Background notes add depth to information presented in the textbook.
• Apply: Collaborative group activities like Think-Pair-Share, research projects, informal debates, and creative tasks as well as critical thinking questions get students to apply principles from history to present-day events so students can better learn from the past.
• Assess: Ongoing discussions, section reviews, and chapter reviews provide opportunities for teachers to assess student understanding and development.

Features of the American Republic Teacher’s Edition

• Discussion questions with notes and guides
• Guides for presenting biblical worldview shaping themes
• Suggestions for collaborative group activities
• Reduced student pages
• Answers with page numbers to section reviews and chapter reviews and suggested answers for critical thinking questions
• Suggested weblinks for supplementary resources