The first major unit in my 9th grade foundational course, after the National History Day and Intro to Geography units, dives into the study of Europe. Last year, the content focus began in the late Middle Ages and finished with the Renaissance. We did not get far enough chronologically to align with where the 10th grade world history course begins, so I needed to make some adjustments for this year. This post is intended to give an overview of the unit and offer some possible resources for teachers who use C3 or cover similar standards or content.
C3 Standards
There are four standards prioritized for this unit. All but one of them were introduced in the introduction units, so the assessments in this unit should start to yield some good evidence of learning.
The coding for the standards comes from the C3 Framework while the name is an in-house classifier. The italicized line is a reference to how we have grouped particular standards together within the same proficiency scale. This was done when we believed certain standards supported each other or were so closely linked that we would always teach and assess them together. Drafts of these scales can be found on my standards-based grading resource page. These tend to be always in a state of minor flux as we adjust wording and think of additional ways to unpack standards.
Guiding Questions
As you can see, the driving question is attempting to connect concepts of political geography with early-modern European history. This unit makes a useful starting point for comparisons to other regions of the world, particularly East Asia, which is the unit directly following this one.
Lesson Resources
Our units always start with map creation and some focus on physical and human geography. National Geographic has some excellent articles on both that I use excerpts from to build some background knowledge and establish a baseline for the Geo Standard 3.
I love a good historical annotated map as they offer great opportunities to both explore history and build inferencing skills. When these are combined with a physical map there are additional analysis possibilities. All my favorite annotated maps come from a book called History of the World Map by Map from DK Publishers and with support from the Smithsonian. Almost all the book’s maps are two pages, colorized, and very detailed. Some of the ones I use in this unit are linked below; check them out.
In addition to some secondary sources and textbook readings, every unit needs a good selection of primary sources. Some of these I found through Fordham Online Sourcebook and made the excerpts myself, others were pulled from various DBQ resources. If you teach internationally and are interested in the versions that have vocab support for Chinese and Korean readers, let me know. My amazing EAL collaborator always makes that happen.
- Thomas Aquinas and Humanism Primary Sources
- Rousseau’s Social Contract Excerpt
- Wealth of Nations Excerpt
- Reformation Assorted Sources
Assessments
There are a number of assessments used in this unit as evidence of student learning. One of the major strategies that helps assess higher level thinking is Harkness Discussions. Students take part in three across the unit, one for each supporting question. A variety of map analysis assessments give them opportunities to show their proficiency on the geography standards. Of course, standard MCQ and SAQ assessments are used as well, especially to establish student understanding of foundational content and basic skills. The end of the unit does include a written reflection that acts as a cap on student learning. There is not a large essay or other major performative task as students are also working on their National History Day projects throughout the first semester.