LESSON FOUR

Overall Unit Question: How have world religions shaped who I am today?

Lesson 4 Includes:

1. Lesson Question
2. Learning Standards Addressed
3. Performance Objective Addressed
4. Resources Listed
5. Learning tasks
6. Assessment tasks
7. Rubrics for assessment
8. Reflection guide

Lesson Question: How did beliefs in each of the main world religions of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Animism, Judaism, or Christianity influence behavior of believers?

Learning Standards Addressed:
Standard 2 - World History of Learning Standards for Social Studies.

• Students can analyze changing and competing interpretations of issues, events, and developments throughout world history.
• Musical pieces from each of the world's great religions can be played, and students can formulate reactions to the message the music delivers.
• Religious art and artifacts (via slides) can be analyzed.
• Students can analyze the roles and contributions of individuals and groups in cultural and religious practices and activities.
• They can understand the development and connectedness of world religions over time.

Performance Objective Addressed:
Show how beliefs from each main religion govern the behavior of believers.

A. Set: Final interview presentations from lesson 2. Share a few of the students most significant facts recorded during presentations. Invite presenters to respond to some of these.

B. Teaching and Learning Tasks:
A research class. Have students individually or in pairs search for facts about the culture as it was influenced by one of the world religions. While students will choose a religion to research, teacher should ensure all religions are covered.

Research on world religions might include the following:

• textbooks
• Internet
• interviews with experts
• films
• representative music
• literature
• lecture notes or fact sheets on the topic
• library searches
• personal knowledge

Assessment Tasks:
Using examples from the 1999 Regents exam, students will create 5 additional questions that might appear on future exams on the topic of how world religions influenced behavior of believers. They will create well written, final copies of answers that provide a key to their questions.

C. Rubrics for Assessment:
Excellent exam questions will:

• target significant facts
• contain accurate responses
• demonstrate relevancy
• be clearly stated and understood by peers
• show evidence of good reasoning.

D. Closure:
Student pairs will choose one question to ask the class orally. They will elicit responses from students first, and then present their research findings as closure.

E. Lesson Reflection:
Jot down a few notes about the process of this lesson. Look at it from the students' eyes and adjust the work so that they learn more successfully as the unit progresses.