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We have four major projects in Sixth Grade Humanities this year: The Rabbit-Hole and the Looking-Glass, Rise and Demise: Indigenous Civilizations, When Worlds Collide: The Age of Discovery, and the Power of Poetry. In addition, we will have a class trip to Chaco Canyon Historical Park, three exhibitions, and a focus on Socratic Seminars.
We have four major projects in Sixth Grade Humanities this year: The Rabbit-Hole and the Looking-Glass, Rise and Demise: Indigenous Civilizations, When Worlds Collide: The Age of Discovery, and the Power of Poetry. In addition, we will have a class trip to Chaco Canyon Historical Park, three exhibitions, and a focus on Socratic Seminars.
The Rabbit-Hole and the Looking-Glass
The Rabbit-Hole and the Looking-Glass
Long Term Learning Target: I can build personal connections to literature by identifying and interpreting a story’s themes.
Long Term Learning Target: I can build personal connections to literature by identifying and interpreting a story’s themes.
The literary value of Lewis Carroll’s classics, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, is often overshadowed by pop-culture adaptations and popular myths. Lewis Carroll was the pen-name of Charles Dodgson, a brilliant Oxford logic and mathematics professor. His books are widely considered to be two of the most highly inspired and influential in the English language.
These books serve the middle school student in the following ways:
They are an allegory for adolescence.
They provide effective teaching tools for critical reading, allusion, metaphor, symbolism, theme, and allegory.
They provide countless opportunities for students to explore a wide-variety of challenging concepts, including philosophy, physics, logic, and psychology.
Students will analyze and muse upon the larger concepts in the books through a framework of writing assignments called “Philosophy Challenges.” These challenges lead to the outcome of greater writing confidence and critical thinking skills within the rich and creative environment of Carroll’s imagination.
Find the project syllabus here.
Rise and Demise: Indigenous Civilizations
Rise and Demise: Indigenous Civilizations
Long Term Learning Target: I can determine the factors that lead to the rise and collapse of a civilization.
Long Term Learning Target: I can determine the factors that lead to the rise and collapse of a civilization.
The Western Hemisphere contained thriving and rich civilizations before Europeans arrived. Our sense of the history of indigenous civilizations is complicated by our assumptions and biases about their own histories. How do we piece together a Pre-Columbian past in order to learn from it? Using the Maya, Ancestral Puebloans, Inca, and Aztecs as case studies, we delve into a deeper understanding of the contributions and fates of these civilizations (and any civilization, for that matter). Each student will choose one of these civilizations to study then collaborate with other students to produce an iMovie documentary, architectural models, and a “solar aligner” to educate those who believe the Western Hemisphere was a “blank slate” prior to the Columbian Exchange. We will also be reading and discussing The Well of Sacrifice, an historical novel about the Maya.
When Worlds Collide: The Age of Discovery and the Great Exchange
When Worlds Collide: The Age of Discovery and the Great Exchange
Long-Term Learning Target: I can formulate and defend a position about the impacts of the Columbian Exchange on the New World and the Old World.
Driving Question: How did the Age of Exploration and the Columbian Exchange set the course for the globalization that determines how we live today?
We begin with the Waldseemuller Map of 1507. It was the first time continents were displayed in the Western Hemisphere, the first time they were called “America,” and it left open certain mysteries about how this German map-maker received his information. The Age of Exploration introduced Europe to continents and societies well beyond its imagination and world-view. These continents were later to be called the Americas and the New World, and through the Columbian Exchange they opened to European empires the promise of great resources: precious metals, new crops, land for settlement, religious converts, and human labor. We will build background knowledge of famous European explorers. Through their journeys and conquests, we will ask what impacts the New World and the Old World had on one another, and how those impacts have determined the world we live in today.
The Power of Poetry
The Power of Poetry
Long-term Learning Target: I can identify poetic devices and then use them to give my writing more voice and power.
Driving Questions: What techniques do famous poets use to create poems that leave a lasting impact on their readers?
Poetry is an oral tradition, and thus it is an auditory experience. Students will find poems from some of the most powerful poets in history and write their own poems to find their own voice. The project culminates in the Poetry Cafe exhibition where audience members "order" poetry to their tables and students perform their favorite works from their favorite poets or the poems they wrote themselves.
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