I am a new teacher and I am trying to throw a lesson together for tomorrow about ancient civilizations. I am specifically teaching about the origins of society. Does anyone have any ideas of how to creatively teach about this? Thanks!
Wow - that's a fairly large topic The orgins of society where? Or did you want to address the features of a civilization? This is probably to late to offer any help but I don't think you have given us enough info to really help you.
You first have to make sure your students understand what "society" is. So I might start the unit with some kind of fun activity that defines the society they live in and what makes it unique. Then you can choose a society somewhere else in the states to give them the experience of comparing two regions. What I'm getting at is that society can be local, regional, national, and even global. Once that is established, you can work backward to look at ancient civilizations from a world perspective down to individual civilizations. You can present each civilization starting with geography (then add other influences) and have the students use critical thinking to predict what that society might be like, then do research to see if their predictions are correct. They may find some surprises along the way that motivate them to figure out what exactly shaped each civilization. (or you could work like archeologists - choose an artifact, and have them make predictions based upon that artifact).
