Teaching World History: Ideas for Your World History Curriculum
Teaching World History
How do you get from cavemen to contemporary history in ten months? Consider the fact that you have to cover the development of agriculture, the formation of civilizations, the rise of the three major religions, and the discovery of the new world-all sprinkled with the growth of science, culture, and language-and teaching world history can be overwhelming. Add the necessity of students developing cognitive thinking and social studies skills such as analyzing data and reading maps, and teaching a world history class becomes downright frightening.
Relax. The best way to face the task of teaching a comprehensive world history class is planning, followed by some more planning. Break the curriculum into manageable units; create, borrow, and steal lesson plans and remember that not everything needs to done at once. This article is an introduction to a series of world history lesson plans for high school and middle school that should help you do just that. The content covered and skills addressed should fit into most world history education maps.
World History Curriculum
This is a basic break-down of possible World History class units.Some units will be more involved based on content, time, and let’s be honest, personal interest!
- Prehistory (An Early Man Lesson Plan to get you started.)
- Earliest Civilizations i.e. (Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley Civilization, Early Chinese) and more.
- Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome (Who was Alexander the Great? starts the second section of these series.)
- African Civilizations
- India and China
- Byzantine
- The Slavs
- Islamic Civilization
- Medieval Europe
- The Renaissance
- Early Exploration
- The Americas
- Cultures and Empires of Asia
- Power Struggles in Europe
- Revolutions
- Industrial Revolution
- World Conflict (Who Stands Behind a Dud? A Lesson Plan on UXB’s (Duds) during WW II begins part 4 of these series)
- Modern Era
Themes, Skills, and Teaching Methods
- The lesson plans for social studies in this series of articles will meet various NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies) and NSS (National Social Sciences) standards.
- Social studies lessons will address social studies skills taught in World History class such as using maps and interpreting data.
- Critical thinking exercises and activities to enhance reading and writing skills will be included.
- Lesson Plans will vary in method, using cooperative learning activities, individual projects, and whole class instruction activities.
Using Movies, the Internet & Other Sources
The following articles offer ideas for teaching world history through movies, novels, the internet and other teaching tools.
Teaching Tips: Teaching US History With Movies
American First Ladies: A Social Studies Lesson Plan
Tossing the Textbook: Book Review of The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
Review of The History in Film Website for Educators
This post is part of the series: World History Lesson Plans for Social Studies
Teach prehistory to contemporary history in ten months. This series of lesson plans in World History uses various teaching methods to meet the needs of different types of learners.
