Western Asia, the Middle East and North Africa

Geography of Western Asia, the Middle East and North Africa

This first cluster of lessons lays the groundwork of important geographic skills and concepts that students will continue to use throughout Grades 6 and 7. In Lesson 1, the “hook” lesson for the unit, students learn about the regionally-organized structure of their study going forward, then acclimate to the physical and human geography of this specific region through photographs and short readings chosen to engage them as readers. Lessons 2 and 3 introduce geographers’ tools in the form of different types of maps and highlight some of their features, such as lines of latitude and longitude. Students learn to read maps as texts (RCA-H.5) and to select maps relevant to answering particular questions about the region’s places and features (PS 5). Lessons 4 and 5 offer a case study in the uses of water in the Middle East, utilizing maps to deepen understanding of the challenges around water scarcity and management. Civic questions arise as students learn about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal #6 concerning clean water and sanitation as a need for all. In the final lesson, students zoom in on the Fertile Crescent and its Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, exploring their value to these societies past and present. They conclude by choosing a claim about water’s vital importance to the region and supporting it with evidence from their readings and maps.

First Civilizations: Ancient Mesopotamia Part I

The complex societies (or civilizations) of ancient Mesopotamia are the oldest known complex societies on earth. Mesopotamia was an incubator of human achievements, from the first written literature and science to the first monumental building projects, from wheeled vehicles to water management systems, and from legal codes to libraries. Cluster 2 will leave students with a sense of wonder for the avalanche of astonishing “firsts” generated by the peoples of this region (corresponding to the modern-day nation of Iraq, and parts of Iran, Kuwait and Syria). Going further, students will also apply critical thinking to examine some drawbacks of civilization alongside its benefits. Cluster 2 begins by grounding students in the conventions and vocabulary for representing ancient historical time and the timeline as an informational text. It then introduces Mesopotamian city-states and empires, guiding students to investigate the topics of governance, religion, economy, education and literary culture in the daily lives of Mesopotamians. At the end of the cluster, students are introduced to the concept and practice of credibility analysis in a 6th grade context (PS 5).

Government and Laws in Ancient Mesopotamia

Cluster 3 is a brief, deeper analysis of one topic: governance and law, probing the intentions and purposes of Mesopotamia’s early legal codes in the context of daily life. For practice standards, these lessons center PS 1 (civic knowledge and participatory skills). These lessons continue students’ thinking about PS 5 through analyses of a source’s purpose and intended audience.

First Civilizations: Ancient Egypt and Nubia

In this cluster, students trace the early development of societies along the Nile Valley, with specific emphasis on the ways that natural geography affected social organization, religious practices, and daily lives. They learn about the social structure of ancient Egypt, and the role of the divine pharaoh at the top of the hierarchy. The lessons then focus more deeply on religion, investigating Egypt’s and Nubia’s shared polytheistic religion, with its positive outlook and central value of Ma’at. The omnipresence of religion, and its conception of life as the first stage of an eternal journey, is illustrated through preparations for the afterlife and funerary practices. Next, wary of past scholarship that diminished the achievements of Nubia, the lessons spotlight the civilization as a dynamic equal to Egypt whose cultural practices mingled and blended with those of its northern neighbor through trade, cultural diffusion, and occasionally conquest. Lastly, students inquire and hold an oral debate about women’s power and the forms it took in these Nile societies (PS 1, PS 2, SLCA.4), a key practice for the Summative Assessment and a topic with resonance today. Throughout the cluster, students engage with both primary and secondary sources, evaluating them for credibility and relevance (PS 5) and using them as windows into ways of living in early complex societies.

New Models of Governing

This short cluster of three lessons supports the narrative coherence of Unit 2 as a whole. A lesson on the Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BCE helps to explain why many early civilizations of West Asia (or the Eastern Mediterranean) were destroyed or severely weakened, making space for new powers to emerge. It also gives students valuable practice in thinking about the historical thinking skill of causation. After this introduction, the cluster shines a light on the Supporting Question concerning innovations in civic and governing institutions. Two Iron Age societies — the Phoenicians who dominated trade in the Mediterranean for a great length of time, and the Persians who ruled Western Asia and North Africa across a great distance — produced a remarkable array of fresh solutions to the challenges their particular societies faced. Grasping their innovations will prepare students with multiple possibilities to consider for their “civic achievement of greatest value” on the Summative Assessment.

The Abrahamic Religions Emerge: Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Among its many other contributions, Western Asia was the birthplace of three major world religions that stemmed from the conception of God held by the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, based upon his reported revelation from God. Judaism, which dates to the Bronze Age, configured its theology around the single, authoritative creator God, a belief in prophets, and an emphasis on law, believed to be conveyed by revelation. Christianity grew in the first century CE as a sect of Judaism that eventually embraced a variety of explanations for the nature of Jesus, in which Church orthodoxy established that he was the Son of God, or Messiah. Jesus’s followers continued to preach his radical social teachings after his death at the hands of the Roman state, and, Christians believe, his resurrection and ascension to heaven. Islam originated in the Arabian oasis town of Mecca in the 7th century CE, when the prophet Muhammad reported receiving revelations from God through the angel Gabriel — revelations which became the Qur’an over a period of 23 years, and which recognized and built upon the prophecy of teachings in the earlier Judeo-Christian scriptures. Each religion spread over time, through diaspora or direct evangelism. Today, adherents to these three religions together make up more than half of the world’s population. Because learning about religion is conceptually demanding, the lessons in this cluster utilize the same pedagogical approach for each religion. After some introductory context and a brief video overview, students visit “centers” or stations, where they learn about similar topics for each religion and respond to prompts in an organizer packet. The overall emphasis is on inquiring about the core beliefs and ideas of each faith (PS 2), in order to cultivate the kind of basic religious literacy that is the foundation of religious pluralism, a central civic and democratic value. In keeping with this goal, Practice Standard 1 lies at the heart of the unit. Along the way, students read a variety of primary and secondary sources, either independently or in small groups (RCA-H.10), and consider the relevance and credibility of sources for different questions about religion (PS 5). At the end of the cluster, they identify similarities and differences among the religions using a Venn diagram and Putting It Together discussion. Throughout the cluster, the emphasis is on respectful learning and appreciation for a variety of traditions.