Grade 6 Lesson at a Glance: Chapter 3, Lesson 4

Houghton Mifflin Social Studies
A Message of Ancient Days

Lesson at a Glance
Chapter 3, Lesson 4: Interpreting Sources (pp. 80-83)

The Big Idea
Framework Concept: Culture The goods and ideas of a culture can come about both through cultural diffusion and through independent development.

Review with students the different ways cultures can come into contact: through trade, war, and migration. Ask how the archaeological record can help determine which kind of contact occurred when.

Discuss with students how people in widely separated areas can develop similar materials to satisfy a need or solve a problem. Be sure they understand that this is called independent development.

Lesson Outline
Use the Lesson Outline to preview the content of the lesson. You may wish to print it for your students as a guide during reading.

Check for Understanding

Ask students to write one sentence describing cultural diffusion and one describing independent development. Discuss their definitions, asking the whole class for examples of each.
Draw two similar (but different) bowls and present to the class as examples of pottery found in two imaginary digs, one in Egypt and the other in China. Have the students be archaeologists and suggest ways to determine how these two different places produced similar bowls. Encourage them to think about issues of dating the objects, connecting that date to any trade or wars that may been going on, or how it may have happened without any contact between the cultures.

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