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"Who Owns the Past?" Using historical inquiry and analysis to study the ancient Egyptian world

Students will be able to:

• • Active prior knowledge about valuable artifacts or heirlooms and share their existing understanding and make connections between what they already know and new information they are learning.

  • Describe the current feud between the British Museum and Egypt’s archeologists.

  • Analyze evidence that support both sides of the debate.

  • Conclude which side has the stronger argument.

  • Identify their claim by answering the question, “Who owns the past?”

  • Evaluate evidence that supports their claim.

  • Summarize the counterclaim argument.

  • Review and organize all the evidence and establish a claim answering the question, “Who owns the past?”

  • Critique other students’ claims and respond with valuable rebuttal statements.

Student Chromebook, Current Events magazine, Padlet, Google Slides, & Parlay

• The Current Events magazine article, "Who Owns the Past?" presents evidence for both sides of this debated question and provides students the information they need to complete the lesson activities.

• Padlet is the perfect tool to brainstorm ideas for this unit. This digital bulletin board tool gives every student a voice and place to post their ideas and opinions.

• The collaboration features Google Slides offers are perfect for the claim-counterclaim activity. Students can work on this in both in-person and remote learning settings. Google Slides provides the opportunity for students to all edit one Google Slide presentation and view each other's work.

• Parlay is an educational technology tool that helps teachers facilitate student-led class debates.

1. H1.2 Use historical inquiry and analysis to study the past

2. H1.2.3 identify the point of view (perspective of the author) and context when reading and discussing primary and secondary sources

3 H1.2.4 Compare and evaluate competing historical perspectives about the past based on evidence

This unit focuses on the question, “Who owns the past?” After studying ancient Egypt and its historical artifacts, like the Rosetta Stone, students will explore both sides of this debated question:

• Egyptian archaeologists are demanding the Rosetta Stone be returned to Egypt-the place of origin.

• The British Museum in London believes the artifact belongs to them because they rightfully acquired it from France- its previous owner.

💡 Lesson 1⃣:

Students will brainstorm important items from their history or family using Padlet to share responses with the class.

*15-20 minutes to complete and discuss answers

📖 Lesson 2:

As a class, we will read an article from the Current Events magazine that discusses the battle over ancient artifacts. We will discuss both sides of the debate, and I will encourage students to back up their positions with evidence.

*35-45 minutes to read and discuss the different viewpoints

💻Lesson 3:

Students will complete a claim-counterclaim collaborative slide deck. All students will access the same Google Slide presentation and each student is assigned one slide to complete this activity, students will:

• Identify their claim by answering the question, “Who owns the past?”

• Evaluate evidence that supports their claim

• Summarize the counterclaim argument

*35-45 minutes to complete and read through each other's slides

🗣Lesson 4:

After the counterclaim activity, students will participate in a class discussion using the Parlay edtech tool. Parlay creates an organized and efficient discussion. It ensures all student voices are heard and prevents a group of students dominating the discussion. Parlay also encourages students to develop strong opinions and provides them a platform to speak and defend their claims. In this Parlay discussion, students will:

• Review and organize all the evidence and establish a claim answering the question, “Who owns the past?”

• Critique other students’ claims and respond with valuable rebuttal statements.

• * 60 minutes to complete the Parlay debate

This unit was designed to reduce cognitive overload.

• I assessed prior knowledge and encouraged students to make connections to both previously learned material and personal experiences, which maximizes the germane load and helps them connect new concepts to existing schemas.

• To reduce the extraneous load, I created clear and concise directions, removed unnecessary and distracting design elements, chunked the learning activates into manageable and appropriate lessons, and provided enough time to complete all tasks.

• To reduce heavy cognitive load and reduce the demand on working memory, I chunked the unit into 4 manageable lessons, providing enough time to complete all tasks and process the new information. Breaking content down into smaller and more manageable sections can reduce cognitive load.

• The Padlet activity assesses not only prior knowledge but also connects new content with past experiences, which can help create more complex schemas.

• In this unit, I followed the simple-to-complex strategy. It begins with lower-level tasks, such as recall questions and a reading activity. Then we move to higher-level tasks, such as evaluating and summarizing claims/counterclaims and the Parlay discussion. Students will acquire essential principles of each task before moving to more complicated ones.

• This unit also follows the low-to-high fidelity strategy. We begin with more low-fidelity tasks and then increase to more complex, graded assignments (i.e., claim/counterclaim and Parlay discussion), resulting in a high-fidelity environment.