Grade 4 Early Societies Unit Plan!

Raphael. "School of Athens." 1509-1511. Apostolic Palace,
Vatican City.

Have I got a treat for you! As our final assignment for the Social Studies course at Brock University, my group members and I have compiled a 12 lesson unit plan for the Grade 4 Early Societies strand. Most of these lessons are longer than one hour, so will provide your students with weeks, even a couple months (depending on how you organize the class schedule) of fun and exploration of world civilizations. You can access the unit plan and the links to the individual lessons here.

The Big Idea for the unit is: how has the environment impacted the development of societies? This unit plan is strongly influenced by the ideas of Jared Diamond from Guns, Germs, and Steel fame. For those unfamiliar with Diamond's work, the Reader's Digest version of his thesis is that gaps in power and technology between civilizations is influenced by environmental differences. Students will have opportunities to explore this idea through a variety of assignments that involve collaboration, technology, integrate other subjects such as Language or the Arts, and allow students to choose their own adventure through inquiry projects.

There are so many fascinating civilizations to study that our group tried to pick societies from multiple continents so students would not have a purely Eurocentric exposure to early societies. We chose to do lessons on Egypt, Greece, Mayans, Medieval England, and Medieval China.

Our culminating assignment will also knock yours (and hopefully your students') socks off. Students get to create their own civilization!! Based on everything they've learned about ancient and medieval societies, they can take the best and leave out the worst of these societies. So many fun questions they'll get to consider! What continent will their civilization be on? How important will art, culture, or trade be to the civilization? What sort of government will it have? I kind of want to do one for fun!

Will your students choose to make a democracy or become a
despot?

Please feel free to contact me if you use any of the lessons or if you make any changes to the lessons for your own classroom. I am always learning and on the hunt for ways to be a better teacher and give students a better learning experience!