This Curriculum unit, written in1993, contains 8 lessons plus a unit introduction for the teacher.It provides a great rationale for teaching this information and focuses on the Han-Roman period all the way to the 14th century. Each lesson is self-contained, but it is important to note that each lesson is NOT one day in length; if taught in full, this unit would take about 17 days (not including a summative assessment, if the teacher wants to design one). Each lesson (individually reviewed below) can stand on its own, allowing teachers to use one or all of the lessons, and there are ways to use parts of a lesson or to make the lessons shorter. One other piece that I love overall in this unit is that it incorporates a wide variety of strategies (none of which are lecture) and it incorporates the current Core Curriculum for Writing for social studies, specifically to write based on new information and ideas. Additionally, each lesson provides a pronunciation guide, which is very helpful to those of us who do not speak Chinese at all. For each video (yes, VHS), a transcript is included. Everything is complete: student worksheets, student information, questions to ask, etc. One warning: The group work is group work: it is not cooperative, so slackers could coast through this unit without much effort.
Lesson 1 - sets up students to write and keep a travel log through the unit as well as providing the maps necessary for keeping places and routes. available for their reference. A video about the geography of the silk road with transcript is part of this lesson. Students are put into groups and each group writes about a section of the Silk Road. Topics include the terrain, advice, etc.
Lesson 2 - the class is broken into six groups and they create "plays" or "tableaux" of the story of the journeys of one man who opened trade and diplomatic relations on the Silk Road. While interesting, a teacher pressed for time could explain this briefly and move onto another lesson.
Lesson 3 - In this jigsaw, the students focus on what was traded and how the flow of trade occurred. While the information is excellent and the idea is great, I do not personally like the way that SPICE set up the jigsaw. They put students into groups of 12 with the students then self-selecting themselves into six groups of two; these two are then the expert groups. Instead, I would suggest first putting students into six groups of 4 or 5 as experts. Then each of these students could then move into a jigsawed group that contains one person from each expert group for a total of six students per group. I think that is much more manageable regarding sharing of information and also allows teachers greater control about ability, leadership, etc. within the various groups. This lesson is one of the most important lessons in my mind as it focuses on trade and how the world became much smaller because of that.
Lesson 4 - Cross cultural communication. This lesson includes a video showing different cultural/regional groups and then has the students experience a simulation where they either have a greeting ("Hi. How are you?") or a response ("I'm fine, thank you" in Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian or French. While this is a cute simulation of how languages had to be overcome, I think that the ensuing discussion about cultural norms (e.g., not offering someone meat or knowing to bow down) is more important, although less time consuming. Again, this is a lesson where a teacher pressed for time could condense the lesson easily.
Lesson 5 - In this lesson, students are once again in groups. They draw a section of a story (2 stories of travelers on the Silk Road) and then they present their picture to the class. This lesson could instead be converted into a Common Core for reading by finding the primary source materials or stories written and then students could answer in their travel logs the questions presented.
Lesson 6 - A really lovely Reader's Theater is presented for this lesson, focusing on the Golden age of the Tang Dynasty. While the lesson suggests 2 to 3 periods so students can rehearse, I have found that as long as students have decent reading skills, no practice is necessary. Again, that would be up to a teacher's discretion and the amount of time available to teach this unit. The second part of this lesson has students in groups create poster presentations about any part of the silk road that they choose. I think this would be better undertaken individually as an individual formative assessment. The questions presented could be discussed as well (if not better) if students completed this individually.
Lesson 7 - Students are able to timeline changes along the silk road in terms of people, empires, discoveries. All of the items to go on the timeline are already given by the authors; the students only need to copy them onto a timeline. I would suggest having the students do the research themselves (perhaps on the computer) or less information being given (e.g., just a list of events without the dates). Otherwise, it's just a copying exercise. I would also suggest having the teacher create the timeline with every 100 years blocked off on long sheets and hand them out to each group ; this way, the timelines can be hung up above/below each other and students can easily see and compare the events.
Lesson 8 - This is the other lesson that I thought was exceptionally important. Great handouts and a cool idea for 6x6 tiles for students. (Again, I would have them do it individually, not in groups). This is a wonderful summative lesson to tie the unit together and to help the students understanding the impact and importance of the Silk Road.