Great+Wall+of+China+Lesson+Plan

__Great Wall of China__ Emily Wood **Subject:** Social Studies **Classroom:** 7 th Grade, 50 min **Location:** China

**Objective**: 7.01 Identify historical events such as invasions, conquests, and migrations and evaluate their relationship to current issues.

**Goals:** As a result of today's lesson students will be able to:
 * Locate and identify China's geography
 * Identify key aspects of the Ming Dynasty
 * Describe reasons the Great Wall of China was built
 * Describe the effects of the Great Wall of China
 * Discuss, briefly, China's neighboring countries
 * Identify importance and reasons behind building walls
 * Develop skills on identifying key points in a text

**Materials:** **Procedure:** // Warm-Up: // Have the students write in their notebooks their definition of a dynasty. If they could be ruler, how would they run their dynasty (5 min) **Assessment**
 * Student notebooks
 * Smart board
 * White paper
 * Markers
 * Empty classroom wall
 * Review students definitions of a dynasty, clarify any discrepancies, have students share their ideas if they were ruler. (5 min)
 * create a K-W-L chart for the Great Wall of China including: the time period it was built, reasons why it was built and the effects of its construction (8 min)
 * Have a short, informational text about the Ming Dynasty and the creation of the Great Wall on the document camera. Allow the students to popcorn read the text. (8 min)
 * http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=619
 * www.paulnoll.com/China/Tourism/history-Great-Wall-6-Ming.html
 * On the smart board, have the students come up to the board and high light the important facts from the text. (8 min)
 * At their tables, have groups create their own walls. Remind them to think about the context on which they would want to build a wall: keep people in, keep people out, keep nature out, etc. They can use markers to create their wall and on the back they need to explain why they chose that wall, what it was made of and the effects the wall has. (11 min)
 * etc. a fence to keep the dog in the yard, a wall of football players to hide the secret play, a dam to stop the flood, personal walls to keep a secret
 * Allow students to post their walls up in the classroom on the Wall of Walls
 * Return to the K-W-L chart and fill in the What We Learned section (5 min)
 * I can measure their understanding of a dynasty based on the verbal responses given of what they would do if they could rule their own dynasty.
 * I will grade the wall the students created on a check minus, check, check plus scale.
 * Check minus: little to no explanation, little to no color or creativity
 * Check: student somewhat explained their wall and showed an attempt at creativity
 * Check plus: student adequately explained why they chose their wall and the effects that it caused. Their wall is also visually pleasing and creative.
 * I will post the highlight text on to our class website and for homework the students will write a brief paragraph summarizing the highlighted points. This will continue their interaction with the content and give them a hard copy of the important facts of the day's lesson. I will collect the homework the next day to check for completion and accuracy but return the paragraphs so they can have them for the quiz.
 * At the end of the unit, there will be a quiz on which the students can demonstrate their knowledge of the facts learned about the Ming Dynasty and the Great Wall of China

__**Narrative Lesson Plan**__ I knew right off the bat that I wanted to do a lesson on China. China's history is something that I am increasingly becoming interested about and am beginning to make plans to travel there after graduation. Until I can go there, I want to learn as much about its unique culture and history as possible. The hard part for me was deciding what aspect of China's culture I wanted to teach. I had previously done a lesson on China's dynasty and using a Venn diagram to compare the three era's but I am trying to build my tool box of lesson plan not simply build on previous creations. I was looking through the North Carolina Standard Course of Study objectives and I ultimately ended up choosing my objective before I chose my lesson and activities. The objective that I chose was Objective 7.01: Identify historical events such as invasions, conquests, and migrations and evaluate their relationship to current issues. The competency goal 7 states “the learner will assess the connections between historical events and contemporary issues in Africa, Asia, and Australia”. I began thinking about what major historical events in China still have a major impact on their culture today. The Great Wall of China is probably one of the most famous aspects of Chinese history and it still affects the people everyday but yet little people, especially Westerners know little about its origin or history. I decided that this was what I wanted my lesson to be on because it could easily be tied into a larger lesson on China's culture and even when explaining about the different dynasties. I want the students to know the facts about the Great Wall of China; I want them to know that it was built to protect the Empire and that it has undergone a series destruction and reconstructions. I want them to know that the majority of the wall that stands today was built during the Ming Dynasty. More importantly, however, I want the student to know why the wall was built. I want them to understand that it was built to keep neighbors out and to protect against invasions which will lead to their comprehension of China's history. It is important for the students to know that the Great Wall now stands as a symbol of pride and heritage for the Chinese. I want the students to have some relevant application to the Great Wall so we will discuss reasons why people build walls in general. They will reflect on reasons why they personally build walls and they can create their own types of walls. This takes the idea of a “wall” a step further and helps the students make the connection between an event that occurred in ancient history and their modern lives. Once I knew what my topic was going to be and what I wanted the students to learn, it was not hard to come up activities for the students to do. Instead of lecturing, but still having the students learn necessary content knowledge, the students will interactively read a text on the Smartboard. The students can come up to the board and highlight the facts throughout the passage that they find important, this allows them to get up out of their seat and make a tangible connection to what they are reading. The text will explain the destruction and reconstructions and a brief history of the Ming Dynasty. For homework, the students will write a summary paragraph of the parts of the text that were highlighted so that they can continue their work with facts. If they simply read the text and moved on, the material would surely be forgotten. To finish up the lesson, the students will create their own types of walls. They cannot simply draw a wall. The students will have to explain the wall they chose, why they chose it and the purpose it serves. Some ideas for a wall that I had were: a wall of football players to keep a secret play, a personal wall to protect a secret, a fence to keep in a vicious dog, etc. This puts the Great Wall of China in a more modern, real-life text and the students can process the different reasons why people build walls. Because this lesson is a small part of a whole unit, there will not be a formal assessment until the end of the unit but they will be graded on their efforts for the day. Their summary paragraphs will be collected the next and graded for completion, I want to return these to the students though so they can have the facts to study for the formal assessment at the end. The walls that the students create will be collected a graded on a check minus, check, check plus scale based on their explanation and creativity. If the student adequately explained the reasoning behind their wall and it is neat and colorful, they will receive a check plus. I also want to display these in the classroom and create a “Wall of Walls”. The students can look at the different varieties of walls and learn about the different reasons people create walls. At the end of the day, it is important for me to feel like my students gained the knowledge that I set out to teach them. I want them to be engaged the whole period and to be constantly learning. If they are attentive and participating during the reading/highlighting of the text then that will show me that they were interested in what was going on. If there is a buzz about the classroom while they are drawing and the students produce creative walls then that will show me that they learned the information, understood the assignment, and cared enough about their work to produce something meaningful. I will hope today's lesson stays with the students throughout the whole unit on China, the final assessment will be able to tell me. If upon the reflection I see that the students appeared bored during the reading of the text, then I will have to come up with another form of communication to relay the information to them- maybe internet research. If they think the wall activity is below their maturity level, then I can create another activity that applies the information that they learned and puts it into their context. I would like to have a relationship with my students that they can, objectively, tell me if they really did not like a unit. I recognize there is a difference between “Ms. Wood this sucks” and “Ms. Wood I think this is to easy so I am bored”, but I will take both comments into thoughtful consideration when it comes to reflecting on my lessons.