tudents will be working collaboratively to research one of four ancient civilizations that have influenced our world today, while building their digital literacy and writing proficiency. Students will present their information to other groups in the form of a slide show using an application such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides. Each group will become an expert on one civilization, and will be teaching the other groups about their civilization. Supplemental materials are included if you choose to do a guided small group for Newcomer ELLs or SPED (special education) students who have impairments in the area of reading. A series of PowerPoint presentations to guide research and facilitate discussions through higher-order thinking questions are provided in both Spanish and English. Rubrics are used to help students improve their writing proficiency by responding to daily prompts which facilitate the discussions. Teachers have the option of teaching the unit as a dual-language unit in Spanish and English or as English only. For the English only version, sentence starters are provided to scaffold language for ESOL or SPED students. The unit can be taught in a social studies or language arts class. Covered civilizations include Maya, Inca, Aztec, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia. Included in the bundle are daily lesson plans with daily objectives, standards, scaffolded discussion questions, vocabulary and assessment rubrics.

This unit is designed to educate students on the 12 most common religions in the world today through web-based research: Baha’i, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism and Zoroastrianism; while at the same time facilitating the development of opinions on spiritual matters, teaching tolerance, and strengthening student writing through daily prompts and a final creative writing project. A final assessment utilizing student research is provided. There are 16 days of PowerPoint presentations to guide the learning leading up to the creative writing project. Each lesson opens with a higher order thinking question designed to develop opinions and teach tolerance. Questions are presented in Spanish and English, with the option to edit out the Spanish. The file “writing rubric” contains a student friendly rubric based on the WIDA writing rubric which should be used daily to evaluate student writing and allow opportunities for teachers to conference with students on how to move to the next level. Following a period where students write their answers, students should be encouraged to share their answers orally and respond to each other, allowing an opportunity for students to engage in a class discussion around the questions.

This wall size alphabet chart allows you to both the alphabet in a manner that is still appropriate for older students. Each letter page includes a city of the world starting with the corresponding letter, with a professional quality image from the city. Cities and countries are labeled.