The following is a sketch of an idea that might be interesting to use during the first few days of school----
I’m fairly certain none of my students would be able to correctly name the Wonders on the list that has been around since the Middle Ages. Can you?
So, how'd you do? The website found here might help you identify the former Wonders of the World. I would hope that you at least got the third one---The Great Pyramid of Giza.
I’m sure many of my young ones would at least state the image is an Egyptian pyramid. As far as the other images go I would give students a little background to the old Seven Wonders list and identify each of of the images----where it is and how it figured in with history.
I would ask students to look at the images again to see if they notice anything in common with them. Notice that all of the images are produced with the exception of the Giza pyramid. There's a great reason for this. The locations that we have long called the Seven Wonders of the World are mostly gone. We have the skeletons and foundations of some, but others......basically they are myth long since eroded into a faint memory.
With this mind I would direct students to some other images. Do you know these?
They are more recognizable, aren't they? I'm thinking that just like you some of my students would know some of these. If you need some help check out the Seven Wonders of the World announcement page from this past weekend and check yourself.
I'm thinking I would identify the ones students don’t know and then divide students into seven research groups to complete a mini-project on their assigned wonder. Students would need to identify their wonder, identify where it is, and the history behind it. Students would create a large image of their wonder and color it. I would also want students to determine why they think their wonder was included in the list. Why is it significant for the world to call it a wonder? Students would present their wonder to the class and at the end of the presentations the data and drawings would become one our first hallway presentations of the year.
I've not fleshed this whole thing out yet....I need to look for great web pages I could bookmark for students to use in their research, I need to write a formalized lesson plan, and I need to relate my standards to an assessment rubric. I need to create a slide presentation for the images.
As a summary there are many directions I could go that could lead to some interesting discussions about history and how we relate to it. Why did we need a new list of "Wonders"? What types of buildings were included in the old list compared to the new list? How does religion play into both lists? Is the old list located in one general area of the world compared to the new list? Why?
The most interesting question I could pose to students is regarding how the lists were compiled and how technology figured in to the whole process.
Hmmmm.....what do YOU think? Got any great ideas regarding presenting the NEW Seven Wonders to students?