World Religions – 5000

School: Brookland Middle School
Instructor: Amanda Mills

Summary

The goal of this lesson is for students to develop an understanding of five major world religions. Student will achieve this goal by developing questions about an assigned religion, researching the answers to those questions and then comparing/contrasting the religion they researched to one of the other world religions. Students will work collaboratively with a partner to research their assigned religion using Google Docs to develop research questions and then answer those questions. They will then work with a different partner to compare/contrast the religion they researched to another religion researched by the other student. As a team, students will create a Google presentation to present their understanding to the whole class.

TIPC Ratings

This lesson scores in approaching for both teacher and student. In the lesson the teacher has created an opportunity for student to develop their own questions to guide their research in relation to the five major world religions. After creating those questions students will apply research skills to find and evaluate resources that will answer the questions that they have developed.

This lesson scores in approaching for both teacher and student. In this lesson students worked in two groups to create their final product. The first group is asked to collaborate on developing questions and researching a specific religion. The second group is formed when two students that researched different religions are paired to compare/contrast those religions. Students used Google docs in both parts of this lesson.

This lesson scores in Approaching for both teacher and student. In this lesson the teacher has provided opportunity for student to demonstrate questioning skills, research skills, and higher-order thinking skills. Students are required to develop their own questions about specific religions, research to find the answers to those questions, and then to compare their understandings to second religion that they did not research in order to gain understandings about both religions.

This lesson scores in as approaching for the teacher and developing for the students. In this lesson the teacher has created a student-centered environment that provides students the opportunity to demonstrate communication and collaboration skills using Google Docs. The students created both the KWL and the presentation using this technology as well as making connections to both prior knowledge and researched information. Students worked in multiple groups to compile this information to create original ideas on the similarities and differences of the world religions.