The 7th Grade Social Studies Standards (For the state of Tennessee)

A standard for history comics…

I recently moved with my family cross country from the great state of Oregon to the great state of Tennessee (sort of a reverse- Oregon Trail thing). Back in Oregon I had been teaching middle school social studies for years and was intimately familiar with all of the standards for 6th, 7th and 8th grade, which I taught.

However, when I moved to teaching 7th grade social studies in Tennessee, I had to get familiar with a new set of state standards. Whereas Oregon’s were more nebulous (“Understand the influence of imperialism in the Western Hemisphere”), Tennessee’s standards are downright prescriptive (“Analyze the importance of regional geography and the location of Constantinople in maintaining European culture”). As a student of history myself, I am quite familiar with all of the new standards that I have to teach, but -as they say- the best way to learn something better is to teach it.

Since I’ve been teaching these new standards I’ve changed the focus of my illustration cartoons from my old content (US History and World Cultures) to what I’m now covering these days (World History from the fall of Rome until 1492). Learning a new curriculum, teaching new content and creating new comics has been difficult to keep up with so far this year and so while I have pages of notebooks dedicated to funny future cartoons, I’ve decided to take my “Zeke’s Guide to History” comics in a new direction.

I’ve decided to make a short and humorous webcomic for each of the 65 state standards. Not only as a stand-in teaching tool that I can reference students to, but also as a way to have them review for the Tennessee state social studies test at the end of the school year. Ideally, I will be able to make these into printables that I can disseminate as zines for each unit that we cover (there are 12 units).

Additionally, any other 7th grade social studies teacher (or even a language arts teacher who is looking for an academically-reinforcing graphic novel for reluctant readers) can access and use these as well.

If you know someone (teacher or student!) who might enjoy these- feel free to pass them on! I’ll be adding to these for quite some time…

(ADDITIONALLY: If you’re looking for a GRAPHIC ORGANIZER for each of the standards, click HERE)