This report is one in a series of reference documents designed to assist those who are directly involved in the revision and improvement of content standards, as well as teachers who use standards and benchmarks to guide everyday instruction. Reports in the series provide information about how benchmarks might best appear in a sequence of instruction and include information on how that content is organized within the state standards documents analyzed. This report is intended to to inform and guide state or district curriculum directors or others who, starting from content that is placed within broad grade bands, need to assign specific grades to benchmarks or objectives. The purpose of this study is to determine what instructional sequences might be revealed through an analysis of standards documents in the subject areas of geography and history. In order to compare geography and history content across the state documents, each of which varies somewhat in the content described, a uniform set of benchmarks was required for reference. To create this reference point, the authors of the study turned to an earlier McREL study on common content in geography and history. This collection of content sequenced by topic should prove useful for districts and schools seeking to assign their states grade-range content to specific grades for instruction.