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Big Era One: Landscape Unit 1.1

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The horizon of human history
13,000,000,000 - 4,000,000 years ago

Why This Unit?

We all have a need to understand beginnings. People from different ethno-racial backgrounds and religions have rooted themselves in particular understandings of beginnings. One cannot understand the history of the world without understanding different ways in which individuals and groups have perceived the origins of the world. This unit engages students in a consideration of why an understanding of beginnings is so important to people. In it students will investigate, compare, and contrast different creation myths. Students will consider some of the modern scientific processes and procedures used to judge the validity of different creation myths, including the theory of evolution. Finally, based on their consideration of myths and scientific theories, students will examine what it means to “know” something and the role of theories in understanding the world around them. The content considered in this unit serves as a foundation for the entire world history course that follows.

 

Unit Objectives

Upon completing this unit, students will be able to:

1. Explain why people possess an intrinsic need to understand both their and the world’s beginnings.
2.Compare and contrast features of different creation myths, and analyze how these myths have satisfied the needs of people with different backgrounds to understand the origins of the world.
3.Describe the order in which different components of the universe came into existence, according to the Big Bang Theory.
4. Analyze the idea that people often understand the world through theories rather than absolute knowledge and that theories are based on the best knowledge available to people at a particular time.

Time and Materials

3 class periods (40 minutes each)
Markers and/or crayons
Unlined paper

 

Table of Contents

Why This Unit?

2

Unit Objectives

2

Time and Materials

2

Authors

2

The Historical Context

3

This Unit in the Big Era Timeline

5

Lesson 1: Creation Myths

6

Lesson 2: A Modern Perspective on the Origins of the World

14

Lesson 3: Knowledge, Myths and You

19

This unit and the Three Essential Questions

24

This unit and the Seven Key Themes

24

This unit and the Standards in Historical Thinking

24

Conceptual Link to Other Teaching Units

25

Resources

25
Correlations to National and State Standards and to Textbooks
25
Conceptual links to other lessons
27
Complete Teaching Unit in PDF Format  
   
   
   

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