Classroom Connections

For each learning module, high school educators have created two lesson plans with guiding questions for student research and classroom discussion.

The Question of Identity: Ethnicity, Language, Religion, and Gender

Before Islam: Overview  »  Module Overview

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Lesson Plans & Guiding Questions

LESSON 1
Using Artifacts for Clues About Identity

Critical examination of image resource bank for this module. Students will closely analyze artifacts, and extrapolate based on the module readings and the artifact descriptions to develop historic understanding of identity in the ancient Near East.

For Grade Level(s): 6–10

Time Needed:  One class period (45–60 minutes) and one night’s homework (30-45 min); or Two class periods.

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GUIDING QUESTIONS
1. How can artifacts function as primary sources?

2. What types of clues can artifacts give us about how the people who created them thought about identity – both with regards to themselves and others?

LESSON 2
Comparing Modern and Ancient Ideas of Ethnicity and Identity

Affiliation with a group that has a specific culture, defined by rituals, customs, and outward symbols of belonging, date to the earliest civilizations and are still an important way that many people define themselves today. Students will compare Near Eastern ways of defining one’s social group or standing with those they see in their own lives and world.

For Grade Level(s): 6–10

Time Needed:  3 hours, divided among class time and homework at the teacher’s discretion.

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GUIDING QUESTIONS
1. Where do we see people try to indicate their membership in groups (ethnic, cultural, social, etc.) in our communities today?

2. How did identity function in the ancient Near Eastern world, according to the module? How is the world described in the module similar to or different from the 19th- and early 20th-century one represented by the pictures you looked at?

3. Are people’s ideas of ethnicity or identity in your world today more alike or different from the ancient and 19th- and early 20th-century Near East?

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