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Common Core LiteracyGrades 6–8History & Social Studies

RH.6-8.4: History and Civics Words in Context

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.4 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

Get the Frayer ModelAll 29 Grades 6–8 Literacy Standards

The Official Wording

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 6-8, Reading: History & Social Studies · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RH.6-8.4 Means in Plain English

Students work out what words mean in a history text, especially terms that belong to civics, economics and government. In an account of the nullification crisis, duties means taxes on imports, not chores, and nullify means declaring a law has no force inside a state.

Fifth grade (RI.5.4) worked out general academic and subject words in grade 5 texts. Grades 6 to 8 focus on the vocabulary of history and social studies, including familiar words with special meanings. Ninth and tenth grade (RH.9-10.4) add the vocabulary of political, social and economic history.

RH.6-8.4 I Can Statements

  • I can use context to work out a history term’s meaning.
  • I can tell when a familiar word has a special history meaning.
  • I can explain a civics or economics term in my own words.

RH.6-8.4 Worked Example

The passage hides an everyday word with a history meaning, and the weak answer falls for the everyday one.

Read the Story
From a history article written for this page: In 1828, Congress passed a tariff that raised the duties on imported cloth, iron and other manufactured goods.The tariff was meant to be protective. By making goods from overseas more expensive, it helped American factories sell their own.Planters in South Carolina, who sold their crops abroad and bought many manufactured goods from overseas, called it the Tariff of Abominations.In 1832, a South Carolina convention voted to nullify the tariffs, declaring them “null, void, and no law” inside the state, and forbade collecting those duties there after February 1, 1833.President Andrew Jackson vowed to enforce federal law, and Congress gave him power to collect the duties by force. A compromise tariff in 1833, which lowered rates step by step, ended the crisis.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: What does “duties” mean in this passage, and what does it mean for South Carolina to “nullify” the tariffs? Use clues from the text.
Not Yet“Duties are things you have to do, like jobs or responsibilities. To nullify means to argue against something.”The everyday meaning of duties does not fit “duties on imported cloth.” And South Carolina did more than argue: it declared the tariffs “null, void, and no law” and forbade collecting them.
Meets the Standard“Here duties are taxes on imported goods, since the tariff ‘raised the duties on imported cloth’ and the state ‘forbade collecting those duties.’ To nullify a law is to declare that it has no force, which is why the convention called the tariffs ‘null, void, and no law’ inside the state. The word itself holds a clue: null, meaning nothing.”It picks the history meaning over the everyday one, proves each meaning with context from the passage, and uses the smaller word null inside nullify as a clue.
Question Stems to Use
Does the everyday meaning of this word make sense here?What nearby words or phrases explain the term?Is there a smaller word inside it, like null in nullify?Is this a word that belongs to history, civics or economics? How is it used there?Put your meaning in place of the word. Does the sentence still make sense?

Common Mistakes with RH.6-8.4

Using the everyday meaning

“Duties are chores or responsibilities.”

Try this: Have students substitute their meaning back into the sentence and reread it; if the sentence stops making sense, the history meaning is different.

Guessing from tone instead of context

“Nullify means something bad, because the President was angry.”

Try this: Ask students to underline the exact phrase that explains the word, such as null, void, and no law, before they define it.

Learning the word but not the idea

“A tariff is a tax,” with no sense of who it helped or hurt

Try this: Pair each new term with a who-gains, who-pays question, so students connect a tariff to the factory owners and planters in the text.

Where RH.6-8.4 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.5.4Work out the meaning of general academic and subject words in a grade 5 text.
AlongsideL.8.4Use context and word parts, like the root of nullify, to work out what a word means.WHST.6-8.2Use precise, subject-specific terms when explaining a historical event in writing.
Comes NextRH.9-10.4Work out words that describe the political, social or economic sides of history.

Practice RH.6-8.4

Vocabulary Worksheet GeneratorFree ToolEnter the unit’s terms, like tariff, duties and nullify, and get a worksheet to edit with definitions, matching and sentences to complete.Unit vocabularyGrades 6-8Matching
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Quick Check

  1. What does duties mean in this passage?
  2. Which phrase best shows what nullify means?
  3. What does it mean that the tariff was protective?

RH.6-8.4: Other Names

RH.6-8.4CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.4

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.