Summary
Through this lesson students will gain a greater understanding of the spread of Islam to India, Anatolia, West Africa, and Spain. In cooperative learning groups, students will answer essential questions regarding the spread of Islam in an assigned region, present their findings to the class, and then compare the answers for each region to find similarities (using a Venn diagram). Then individually, students will write a RAFT, creating a historical narrative over the spread of Islam from a viewpoint of their choice from a region of their choice
Essential Question(s)
What similarities and differences can you identify in the spread of Islam among countries? What factors influenced people to convert to Islam?
Snapshot
Engage
Students engage in a guessing game regarding a few facts about Muslims in an attempt to dispel some misconceptions and focus the lesson.
Explore
Students work in cooperative groups to answer five essential questions for one of the regions to which Islam has spread: Anatolia, West Africa, India, and Spain
Explain
Groups present their findings for one of the regions and then finds similarities among the regions.
Extend
Students deepen and demonstrate their understanding of what they have learned by completing a RAFT writing assignment.
Evaluate
Students knowledge is evaluated by the completion of the Venn diagram, and the writing of the RAFT assignment.
Materials
Teacher Resource page: Opening questions and visuals for Engage Activity
Student devices with internet access
Lesson Slides (attached)
Four-Way Graphic Organizer handout (attached)
RAFT writing assignment handout (attached)
Engage
Teacher places 3 questions on the board (See teacher resource handout). Students are to number a piece of scrap paper and to answer the three questions. After they answer the questions, they participate in a Commit and Toss Activity.
Students "grade" the new papers and the teachers poll the number of answers for each question. Teacher shares correct answers and dispels myths.
Explore
The teacher tells the students that today they will study the spread of Islam in one of four major regions: Anatolia, India, Spain, and West Africa. Group students into groups of three and pass out the Four Way Graphic Organizer. Have groups randomly draw slips of paper with region names for the region they will research. Student groups are to research the five questions in the middle of their paper. There are resource websites in the Resource section that might be helpful for student research. Students may also use their text or other internet sites.
Explain
Students share their information from the five questions through a class discussion. You simply may want students to share aloud with the class their notes for their particular country. There is a power point slide in the attachments that can be used by the teacher to record class answers with a Smart board or projected against a whiteboard as countries are discussed. Or If a document camera is present, student groups can share their notes from their paper using the document camera.
Students who did not research that country will take notes from the other group responses to complete their graphic organizer.
Expert Jigsaw Activity: Regroup students into groups of 3 or 4 so that each country that was researched is represented in the new groups. Ask these new student groups to find and discuss at least 3 to 5 similarities about the spread of Islam among the countries. Have these new student groups report out the similarities. This information can be added to the teacher power point slide.
Extend
Pass out the RAFT activity to each student. Each student is to choose one of the RAFT assignments and write in that appropriate role. They may use their notes from the Graphic Organizer activity and their texts to complete the writing.
Evaluate
The completed Graphic Organizer and the RAFT writing assignment can serve as the assessments.
Resources
Some possible websites for student research include: