Gifts from Ancient Cultures

Gifts from Ancient Cultures

Do you really want to make ancient cultures come alive? How better to draw students in than with informative songs and compelling stories that pull them right into the times they are learning about.

This book includes materials for 13 ancient cultures—from Neolithic times to the Persians, from the Mediterranean to Africans, Americans, and Asians.

Each culture has a To/From tag and gift slips for a bulletin board.

Each culture has a song with general information about the culture and specific information about the gifts the culture gave.

Each culture has an original first person historic fiction narrative to supplement the nonfiction data.

My original motivation for designing Gifts from Ancient Cultures came from Washington state’s Grade Level Expectations for sixth grade social studies, which include:

• “Understands and analyzes how cultures and cultural groups in ancient civilizations contributed to world history” (6th HISTORY 4.2.2).

• “Understands and analyzes how technology and ideas from ancient civilizations have impacted world history” (6th HISTORY 4.2.3).

The historic fiction narratives provide a model for students writing their own narratives (CCSS W.6.3.A), and the book includes a scoring guide for student narrative pieces.