1200 U6 Guide
Unit 6 Guide
2Unit 6: Industrial Empires 1850 to 1950 CEArmed with new industrial technologies and ideas like nationalism, modern nation-states colonized billions of people and built vast empires. New ideas about social and political life, plus new technologies for producing and distributing goods to a rapidly growing population, turned much of the world into a competitive arena for resource-hungry industrialized states. The desire for raw materials and cheap labor led to violent conquests that exploited and often dehumanized local people. But colonized peoples everywhere developed novel strategies to resist foreign rule.
Unit 6 Learning Objectives1.Describe how industrialization and nationalism led to imperialism and the expansion of empires. 2.Understand and evaluate how communities responded to increased industrialization and the expansion of empires. 3.Examine the ways in which colonialism directly impacted societies, and how colonialism continues to do so today. 4.Analyze the different ways colonized people responded to colonialism.For individual lesson learning objectives, please review the lesson teaching guides.
Big Questions In this unit, students will consider this Unit Problem: How were industrial empires created and contested, and how did those processes shape our world today?To help them answer the Unit Problem, students will also consider the following questions:1.What were the factors that motivated imperialism, and what made it possible?2.How did different communities experience colonialism, and how does colonialism still impact our world today?3.What were the different ways colonized people responded to colonialism?
Lessons Overview Lesson 6.1 Empire and Other Consequences of IndustrializationImperialism and ColonialismLesson 6.2 Industrial ImperialismLesson 6.3 ColonialismLesson 6.4 Resisting ColonialismFollow the links above to explore each lesson in this unit. Look for this symbol to find the lesson guides, which provide teacher guidance, including sample answers.
6Teaching Tips
Openers and ClosersYou’ll find quick opener activities at the start of each lesson. They’ll help students preview the upcoming material and engage their prior knowledge. Although we’ve written them to align with the content of each lesson, feel free to swap in any openers/do-nows/bell-ringers that you already use! You’ll find closer activities at the end of all lessons—they’re meant to give students the opportunity to reflect and show their understanding. While we’ve written them to align with the content of each lesson, feel free to swap in exit tickets or other checks for understanding. For more information, check out Openers and Closers Quick Tips.
Unit NotebookUnit Notebooks are found throughout this course and offer a great opportunity for informal writing and assessing understanding. The aim of these activities is to keep students and teachers connected to the core themes of the unit. The first time students encounter the Unit Notebook (Unit 6 Notebook: Part 1), they’ll be asked to evaluate each of the statements based on what they currently know. The second time they encounter the Unit Notebook (Unit 6 Notebook: Part 2), they’ll be asked to more thoroughly respond to the questions and revise and refine their initial understanding of the unit’s core concepts. The point here is for students to focus on concepts rather than formal writing. Additionally, the Unit Notebook helps both you and your students assess how their thinking is progressing, where they’re gaining mastery, and where they might need additional instruction.Click here for the Unit 6 Notebook: Part 1Click here for Unit 6 Notebook: Part 2
Historical Thinking SkillsThe integration of skills and content is foundational to OER Project courses. Skills development is just as important—if not more—than content knowledge for student thinking and learning in social studies classes. Throughout this course, students encounter numerous, scaffolded opportunities to practice causation, comparison, continuity and change over time, contextualization, sourcing, and making and testing claims. Practice progressions are made up of three categories: progression activities, thinking tools, and feedback forms. Each step in a progression is more sophisticated than the one before, challenging students along the way but also supporting them as they do this work. You can find the following progression activities in Unit 6:•Claim Testing: Imperialism•Causation: Indian Uprising•Contextualization: Opium Wars•Sourcing: Differing Perspectives on ImperialismLearn more in our Historical Thinking Skills Guideand see where all the progression activities live in the World History 1200 Practice Progressions Placement document.
Frames of World HistoryThis course asks you and your students to examine world history through different lenses, or frames. The frames are communities, networks, and production and distribution.The frames help students organize the vast amount of information they will encounter in world history, giving them a framework to help make sense of all the ways in which someone might tell the history of the world. This approach highlights the idea that historical accounts are based on particular perspectives. More important, these frames provide students with big picture, historical “stories,” thus providing a cohesive backdrop against which students can construct their historical understanding. As students move through the course, they will examine how each frame has changed over our long history. Learn more in our Frames Guide.
ReadingsOER Project includes primary sources and articles written by a diverse group of scholars and OER Project staff. Some of the reading involved in OER Project courses can be challenging, but it is vital for engaging with the course content. All texts in the course—other than those that are part of DBQs (document-based questions) or are primary source materials—have been Lexile leveled, and each article has three or four versions to accommodate students of all reading abilities. OER Project provides Guiding Questions alongside each reading. These questions encourage students to approach the text at three levels—first by skimming the text, next by reading to answer Key Ideas questions (“While You Read”), and finally by evaluating the text through “After You Read” questions that encourage connection and synthesis.For more information, see our Reading Guide.
ActivitiesActivities are an important part of OER Project lessons and serve to build student understanding and engagement. Activities provide an opportunity to get students moving and “doing” history through exercises like informal writing, group work, simulations, and debates.Progression activities appear in multiple units and are based on historical thinking skills like sourcing and contextualization. Each activity in a progression is meant to be more sophisticated than the one before, challenging students but also supporting them as they do this work.For all activities in OER Project—except for some openers and closers—teachers can find directions and sample answers in the accompanying lesson guides. Click here to learn more about activities.Click here to learn more about historical thinking skills.
VideosWe use videos as a visually engaging approach to course material. While students are often excited to learn that they’ll be watching a video in class, video-watching is a skill, just like reading an article. Here are a couple of quick strategies to get you started:•We suggest students first read the video description and Guiding Questions, or even skim the video transcript. We’ve provided you with time stamps and sample answers, which students will not see. •We recommend chunking the videos using the Key Ideas feature, which pauses the video at the specific times of the corresponding Guiding Questions, and provides an opportunity for discussion or note-taking.•You can also play the video twice: once straight through and once with pauses at key ideas.For more information, see our Video Guide.
Graphic BiographiesOER Project’s graphic biographies are one-page histories of people. Whether they’re “important” or “everyday,” each of these individuals has their own story, their own history, and those stories weave in and out of the global themes of their era. Their experiences highlight, and sometimes bring into question, developments on a global scale that students are studying as part of the frame narratives presented in the course. These biographies are one of the best ways for students to zoom in, and doing so helps bring nuance to their understanding of history. In some cases, the biographies will complicate the frame narratives—the experience of an individual will not necessarily fit with the global experience—but they don’t invalidate the frames; they just deepen and enrich them.Check out How to Read Comics for an introduction to reading graphic biographies. Click here to learn more about our Graphic Biographies.
WritingAt OER Project, we encourage students to write. A lot. At times, we want them to write informally, in order to express their initial understandings. Other times, we have them write formally, to solidify their thinking and refine their arguments. They will write, review, and refine their work multiple times. This isn’t easy for m ost students. However, our research has shown that this hard work makes a real difference in the quality of their writing—a terribly unsurprising conclusion. Clear, consistent expectations, frequently revisited, is not a magic formula; it’s just good teaching.In each unit of this course, there are opportunities for students to participate in a formal writing activity that results in an essay. These assessments can take the form of document-based questions (DBQs) or open-ended long-essay questions (LEQs). Each prompt is offered on its own, if you’d like to assign an LEQ, or with an accompanying set of sources, if you’d like to assign a DBQ. Lesson 6.4 offers a writing opportunity on responses to colonial rule in which students respond to this prompt: How effective were responses to colonial rule between 1850 and 1900 CE?Click here to learn more about our writing approach.Click here for informal writing routines.
AssessmentOER Project values a comprehensive approach to assessment. We embed assessments throughout the course—every activity is developed to allow students and teachers to gain insight into their understanding. Our courses give teachers many opportunities to review student work—both formally and informally—and determine areas for improvement and enrichment. However, all assessments are optional and to be used at the teacher’s discretion. We stress the use of rubrics throughout the course. We have a set of rubrics for teachers to use to give consistent feedback to students on their participation in discussions, their presentations, and on their writing. We also provide a standardized set of “thinking tools,” with accompanying feedback forms, to help students understand the goals and targets of each activity.OER Project does not provide guidance on grading. Teachers know their students, instructional context, and routines best, and are without doubt in the best position to assess them fairly. Learn more in our Assessment Guide.