In this lesson students will have the opportunity to view parts two and three of the PBS video series Islam: Empire of Faith or use suggested adaptations to learn about Islamic culture and research specific topics associated with Islamic culture using the internet, library books, and various research tools. Students will create a Great Thinkers and Accomplishments of Islam Fact Cube that represents their research and incorporates visuals. *This is lesson 4 of unit on Islam entitled: Islam-Empires of Faith.

This video describes how global communication has evolved throughout history, from the printing press to the internet.

This interactive feature from PBS allows students to navigate the variables of physical geography and how these simple elements have shaped the course of global history. For instance, natural impediments such as mountain ranges or bodies of water created isolated civilizations. He argued that continents which were easily traversible, such as Europe encouraged trade among different people and stimulated development.

This interactive feature from PBS allows students to navigate around the Earth via continents and climate zones. It also highlights the place where Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel started his quest, Papua New Guinea. See what each area has to offer in terms of location, vegetation, wildlife and climate. This is an easy way to see why some areas prospered and others were left behind, victims of the hand of cards they had been dealt.

Students learn about life in Babylonia through the lens of Hammurabi's Code. This lesson is designed to extend world history curricula on Mesopotamia and to give students a more in-depth view of life in Babylonia during the time of Hammurabi.

This article traces the history of the Han Dynasty of China from 206 B.C.E. to 220 C.E.

Students will summarize the issues regarding violence and reproduction for Latin American women and compare the treatment of women from different socio-economic classes.

The focus of this lesson is on the use of hieroglyphs as a form of communication, record keeping, and as a means for preserving and passing down history. Students will learn basic information about the alphabet, common Egyptian words, and how to read hieroglyphic messages. Students will also practice using hieroglyphs to create messages of their own.

In this lesson, students will be broken into different groups representing the Hindu caste system. Each group will be given and list of tasks and responsibilities to complete during the lesson in an effort to earn karma points. At the end of the lesson, there will be a rebirth ceremony where students will be moved into higher classes based on how many karma points they earned.

Students will understand how the Hindu caste system and reincarnation work. Students will understand the major vocabulary in the Hindu religion. *Lesson is designed to be used with a SMART Board, but can be adapted.

Students reflect on the Holocaust from the point of view of those who actively resisted Nazi persecution.

This unit emphasizes the diaspora of human history.

Sixth graders are by nature a myopic people, and constantly in danger of not examining their own assumptions. Teaching large scale human history as a beginning to a closer study of culture, movement patterns and events allows students to understand the miraculous conditions that allowed humans to flourish. The perspective we take in this unit also challenges students to consider that the choices we make always provide a set of positive and negative consequences. In past pedagogy, the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture was taught as the catalyst of human progress. While that is not entirely wrong, it limits students' thinking by not considering the things we lost with this "opportunity cost."

In keeping with the new geography-heavy 2015 standards, this unit begins with a role-playing simulation that asks students to learn specific biomes to imagine they are plopped down in a certain region of the world, with nothing but a basic tool kit (no clothing, food, or shelter!). Right away students understand the complexity of early survival and the interrelationship with the environment. Then, building on the interpretive skills they learned in Unit one, student examine cave paintings to hypothesis lifestyle choices and necessities for early paleolithic peoples. Students recall the mapping skills learned in Unit One to get a visual perspective of the human diaspora in the next lesson, which maps the migration out of Africa, and sets the stage to understanding the next big topic: shifting from hunting and gathering to an agrarian way of life. But first, students will culminate their learning of early humans in an analysis of the issue of who gets the rights to study Kennewick man's remains.

**From the new AAPS 6th grade curriculum; written by Rachel Toon for ATLAS

For most of human existence our ancestors led precarious lives as scavengers, hunters, and gatherers, and there were fewer than 10 million human beings on Earth at any one time. Today, many cities have more than 10 million inhabitants each, and populations continue to skyrocket. In this interactive presentation from Nova, students can trace the dramatic growth of human populations over recent centuries on our global map, and see where on Earth as many as three billion more people may live by 2050.

In this lesson students will explore human rights and their relationship to one another. They will gain an appreciation of how human rights are violated in conflict zones- through a consideration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lastly, students will consider some of the controversies surrounding human rights. Lesson includes an interactive game on human rights, research prompts to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and an opportunity to assess the UN's Declaration of Human Rights.

In this lesson, students will explore the role of ISIS in the Middle East, interpret political cartoons on the U.S. response to ISIS, and monitor the news coverage of ISIS over time.

In this activity, students will be able to represent the numerous outcomes of the Columbian Exchange on both North America and Europe. This activity will require students to research the goods, ideas, people, diseases, and animals that were exchanged between continents during the Age of Exploration. By using a T-Chart, students will compare the Exchange from the perspectives of both continents, and define the outcome of the exchanges, e.g. increased caloric intake, increased Native American mortality rates, advancement in agricultural methods.

Students take a virtual field trip to the ruins of Pompeii to learn about everyday life, art and culture in ancient Roman times, then display their knowledge by creating a travelogue to attract visitors to the site. They can also write an account of their field trip modeled on a description of Pompeii written by Mark Twain.