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

Students will work in groups to:

• Gathers data for research topics from interviews (e.g., prepares and asks relevant questions, makes notes of responses, compiles responses).
• Listens in order to understand topic, purpose, and perspective in spoken texts (e.g., of a guest speaker, of an informational video, of a televised interview, of radio news programs).
• Evaluate the validity and credibility of different historical interpretations.
• Understand the importance of equality of opportunity and equal protection of the law as a characteristic of American society.
• Understand the important factors that have helped shape American Society.
• Know ways in which Americans have attempted to make the values and principles of the constitution a reality.
• Understand the significance of fundamental values and principles for the individual and society.
• Know how various individual actions, social actions, and political actions and help to reduce discrepancies between reality and the ideals of American Constitutional democracy.
• Know historical and contemporary efforts to reduce discrepancies between ideals and reality in American public life.
• Understand significant influences on the civil rights movement.
• Know different types of primary and secondary sources and the motives, interests, and bias expressed in them.
• Analyze the values held by specific people who influence history and the role their values played in influencing history.
• Use a variety of primary sources to gather information for research topics.
• Use a variety of criteria to evaluate the validity and reliability of primary and secondary source information.
• Synthesize information form the multiple research studies to draw conclusions that go beyond those found in any of the individual studies.