Intro to World History-Mini Unit- Updated!

How many times have you heard, "Why do I need to learn this?" Every year, most likely. This activity was designed to link current events with history and is a great way to either start the year or end the year. This activity includes a webquest to pages specifically written for this activity. There are five current event topics:

Terrorism

War and Conflict

Human Rights

The Environment

Globalization

Pro-Democracy Movements (added for 2019)

The students will read each page and answer questions. The pages also encourage map and graph interpretation as well. Within each topic, students will be exposed to past events that the will be covering in class, such as the Neolithic Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Holocaust and many more. The activity concludes with a vocabulary check for understanding.

Also included is a PSA (Public Service Announcement) project to wrap up the mini-unit. The students will get a current event and fill out a chart after researching the event. Then, they will create a PSA poster (either digitally or on paper) that focuses on the reasons why the topic is important and how it is related to the past. A rubric is included. The purpose of the PSA is for the students to create a thesis and then support the thesis with facts that they researched.

To get an idea of the topics covered, here is the link to the page regarding Human Rights: https://bbced.blogspot.com/2017/06/human-rights.html

The activity is designed for high school students, but can be adapted for other ages.

This can be used as an introduction to the class or as a final project at the end of the year.

The zipped file contains 5 .pdf files:

1. Instructions

2. Webquest

3. Webquest Key

4. PSA project (Instructions, example and rubric)

5. World Issues Topics List