The Salvadori Curriculum: Social Studies

Each lesson plan is in PDF format. Select the lesson title to open the file.

Classroom Restyle - Your challenge is to research the culture of an ancient civilization and use the information to turn your classroom into a period room. You may have seen a period room in a museum – it is a room which has been reconstructed using artifacts or replicas to look like it came straight out some historical period. The purpose of a period room is to give us a glimpse of what life might have been like for people living in the past.

East Meets West - Your challenge is to develop a plan to modify your classroom to make it a better space for working and playing using the ancient Chinese philosophy of feng shui. After learning about a particular aspect of feng shui, you will try to figure out whether your classroom has good feng shui and areas in which it could be strengthened. You will think up ways to improve the feng shui of the room, and then have a chance to actually make some of those ideas a reality.

Invisible Dimension - Explore the classroom and the school in order to identify the specifics of the interior design that might be affecting people’s behavior.

Life On The Prairies - Imagine a place where the land and sky seem to go on forever, where not a single tree breaks the line made by the sky and horizon, where the wind blows so constantly that it can drive people crazy. Also image a place where the soil is so rich it can grow almost anything and people believe fortunes can be made if only they put their heart, soul, and blood into the land.. Imagine all this, and you've imagined life on the American prairies in the 19th century. In this lesson, you will investigate the geographic, social, economic and political factors that prompted the migration to the Mid-West after 1862 and made possible the emergence of sod houses. As you do this investigation, you will also examine the construction of these structures and write an essay about the everyday life in the newly formed communities.

Living Native-American Style - We will be building a model of a Native American community. One group will model the physical and biological environment of the community. The rest will build structures based on their research of the housing types of the tribe that used to live in our area.

My Digs - Your challenge is to select an object in your home that you want to preserve for posterity. Think of it as a message to a future archeologist. What would you like to communicate about yourself and your life in the 21st century to a civilization in the future? There’s no guarantee that archeologists from the future (let alone from another planet!) will be able to read our writing. What conclusions might they come up with based only on the objects you and your classmates choose to bury in the time capsule you design?

My School Has A Style? - Your challenge is to investigate the style of your school building within the context of its history. You will be researching architectural styles and their relationship to historical eras and will create a visual presentation of your findings so the rest of the school can learn from your efforts.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us.