Europe
Teaching Idea:
1. Class brainstorms basic categories of characteristics that we should know about a civilization, for example government, economics, culture and religion, etc. Students put ideas on the board, teacher clarifies and adds ideas as needed.
2. Teacher demonstrates a 3-4 min lecture covering all of those categories for Europe in 1500. For example politically not unified, a few nations that we know today existed like the four on the slide, hundreds of smaller kingdoms in what is now Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe. Monarchy along with local feudal lords. Economic production based on crops like wheat, barley, the dyed wool trade, some trade on the Black Sea, various rivers, and the Mediterranean Sea connected them to the Silk Road and Trans-Saharan Trade. Culturally dominated by Christianity (Catholics in West, Orthodox in East).
3. Student groups work for 30 minutes doing research on one of the following places; each group gives a brief presentation to the class. The teacher models effective note-taking at the same time. These can be brief overviews since these places will come up again later in the unit in more detail when Europeans show up there.