The following standards have been taken from the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McRel) standards.

United States History

Standard Ten:

Understands how the industrial revolution, increasing immigration, the rapid expansion of slavery and the westward movement changed American lives and led to Regional territories.

Level II

#5: Understands how slavery shaped social and economic life in the South after 1800 (e.g., how the cotton gin and the opening of new lands in the South and West led to increased demands for slaves; differences in the lives of plantation owners, poor free black and white families, and slaves; methods of passive and active resistance to slavery; escaped slaves and the Underground Railroad).

Level III

#5: Understands different economic, cultural, and social characteristics of slavery after 1800 (e.g., the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the ending of the Atlantic slave trade; how slaves forged their own culture in the face of oppression; the role of the plantation system in shaping slaveholders and the enslaved; the experiences of escaped slaves).

Level IV

#3: Understands how slavery influenced economic and social elements of southern society (e.g., ways slavery hindered the emergence of capitalist institutions and values; the influence of slavery on the development of the middle class; the influence of slave revolts on the lives of slaves and freed slaves).

#6: Understands the social and cultural influence of former slaves in cities of the North (e.g., their leadership of African-American communities, how they advanced the rights and interests of African Americans)

Standard 13:

Understands the causes of the Civil War.

Level II

#1: Understands slavery prior to the Civil War (e.g., the importance of slavery as a principal cause of the Civil War; the growing influence of abolitionists; children’s roles and family life under slavery).

Visual Arts

Standard Four:

Understands the visual arts in relation to history and cultures.

Level III

#2: Understands the historical and cultural contexts of a variety of art objects.

Level IV

#1: Knows a variety of historical and cultural contexts regarding characteristics and purposes of works of art.

#3: Understands relationships among works of art in terms of history, aesthetics, and culture.

Language Arts

Reading

Standard Six:

Uses reading skills and strategies to understand and interpret a variety of literary texts.

Level III

#5: Makes inferences and draws conclusions about story elements (e.g., main and subordinate characters; events; setting; theme; missing details; relationships among story elements, such as the relevance of setting to mood and meaning in text).

#6: Understands the use of specific literary devices (e.g., foreshadowing; flashback; progressive and digressive time; suspense).

#7: Understands the use of language in literary works to convey mood, images, and meaning (e.g., dialect; dialogue; symbolism; irony; rhyme; voice; tone; sound; alliteration; assonance; consonance; onomatopoeia; figurative language, such as similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, allusion; sentence structure; punctuation).

#8: Understands the effects of an author's style (e.g., word choice, speaker, imagery, genre, perspective) on the reader.

#10: Understands inferred and recurring themes in literary works (e.g., bravery; loyalty; friendship; good v. evil; historical, cultural, and social themes).

Level IV

#6: Understands how themes are used across literary works and genres (e.g., universal themes in literature of different cultures, such as death and rebirth, initiation, love, and duty; major themes in American literature; authors associated with major themes of specific eras).

#7: Understands the effects of author's style and complex literary devices and techniques on the overall quality of a work (e.g., tone; irony; mood; figurative language; allusion; diction; dialogue; symbolism; point of view; voice; understatement and overstatement; time and sequence; narrator; poetic elements, such as sound, imagery, personification).

# 8: Understands relationships between literature and its historical period, culture, and society (e.g., influence of historical context on form, style, and point of view; influence of literature on political events; social influences on author's description of characters, plot, and setting; how writers represent and reveal their cultures and traditions).