Ashley Dockins

Rick Harper

Title:  How did the Anasazi live and what things did they do?

Grade Level: 3rd

Time Frame: 45-50 minutes

Broad Goals:  

Cognitive Domain- Students will demonstrate an understanding of the Anasazi culture such as having knowledge of the types of food they ate, how they hunted, their role in the community, and their crafts.
Affective Domain- Students will appreciate and respect the way of life of the Anasazi and how they lived.  

Social Studies Standard:

State: 16.D.2 (W) Describe the various roles of men, women, and children in the family, at work, and in the community in various time periods and places (e.g., ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, ancient China, Sub-Saharan Africa).

National:  3.h: Social Studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of people, places, and environments so that the learner can examine the interaction of human beings and their physical environment, the use of land, building of cities, and ecosystem changes in selected locales and regions.

Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate new knowledge of the Anasazi culture by completing a crossword puzzle and Anasazi culture web.

Materials: crossword puzzle, word web, ear of corn, fact cards, The Ancient Cliff Dwellers of Mesa Verde, basket, map

Resources:

Arnold, C. (1992). The Ancient Cliff Dwellers of Mesa Verde. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin

Anasazi. Retrieved on September 29, 2009, from http://www.cliffdwellingsmuseum.com/anasazi3.htm

Crossword Puzzle. Retrieved on September 27, 2009, from http://www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/bin/crossword.cgi 

The Anasazi. Retrieved on September 29, 2009, from                                                                                                             http://www.desertusa.com/ind1/du_peo_ana.html

Native American Cultures. Retrieved on September 29, 2009, from http://teacher.scholastic.com/researchtools/researchstarters/native_am/

 
Focusing Activity:  Students will be asked if they remember anything that was discussed in the last lesson about the Anasazi. The teacher will make sure to guide the discussion by stating that the Anasazi are the native people who lived long ago in what is now the National Park, Mesa Verde. The teacher should also guide the discussion by reminding the students the region that the Anasazi lived in. The teacher will do this by asking the children to point out the region on a map where the Anasazi lived and the name of the states the region is in should also be discussed at this time.

Purpose: The purpose of this lesson is to allow the students to study the Anasazi culture to better enhance their knowledge of the ancient people and the past of Mesa Verde National Park.

Instruction:

The teacher should begin by passing out cards to each student. It should be discussed that on the cards are facts that we will be learning about the Anasazi today. It is important that the students listen closely because if they hear a fact that is on one of their cards during our discussion they may place that fact card in a basket and the first person to place all of their cards in the basket may receive a prize at the end of the lesson. The teacher should make sure to pay special attention that students are placing fact cards into the basket at appropriate times in the discussion or when that fact is being discussed.  The prize should be culturally appropriate such as ear of corn, squash, or beans. The teacher will discuss how the Anasazi lived.

The teacher will first discuss the definition of culture. Culture should be described as the type of things that a group of people do as well as their clothes, food, dwellings, and beliefs. The teacher should note that the Anasazi were here way before Americans were.  The teacher should then continue with describing the clothes of the people and mention that during winters the Anasazi used animal skins, fur, and turkey feather blankets as clothing to stay warm.  Following discussion of clothing the teacher should discuss the different types of foods that the Anasazi would farm. The teacher should discuss at this point how the Anasazi used rain fall, small streams, and melted snow to water their plants. Also, it should be mentioned that the Anasazi grew plants such as corn, beans, and squash. This thought can be embellished by also discussing how they used the natural plants of the area as well for food as well as tools for survival. (such as the broadleaf yucca and its use for sandals, ropes, animal snares, and baskets.) The harvest of wild plants as well can be discussed including: roots, berries, nuts, greens, cacti, seeds, and fruits. The teacher should ask the students if we eat any plants that the Anasazi ate? (corn, beans, fruits..) Pictures of the plants can be shown to the students on p. 40-43 in The Ancient Cliff Dwellers of Mesa Verde. The teacher can take this time to discuss how the Anasazi would climb up the cliffs to the mesa top to work on their fields.  The teacher should take this opportunity to discuss that the Spanish word mesa means table top similar to how the top of the rocks were flat. Furthermore, verde is the Spanish word for green similar to how the plants were on top of the flat rocks. Also at this time the eating of meats in the Anasazi village should be discussed. The teacher should state that the Anasazi ate animals such as mountain sheep, elk, deer, and bears. The teacher should state how the Anasazi hunted by using bow and arrows made from stones or wood shaped to a point to create the arrow and a branch and yucca cord as a string to create the bow. It should also be mentioned that the men and boys did the hunting and also what kind of animals that they ate. An interesting fact to include would be about the grounding of corn to make corn meal would be that they did it on stones so often grit from the stone became part of their corn meal. At this point the teacher would add that women did the grinding of corn into corn meal and looked after the children. The teacher would discuss how babies are kept in cradle boards that could be worn on the back or propped up against something. After discussing the food of the Anasazi it would be important to include the things they kept their food in. Furthermore, the teacher will discuss with the students how the Anasazi were makers of pots and baskets which they used to store their food or eat out of. Pots were made for cooking and eating out of and made of clay which was a resource found in the region. Before the Anasazi learned how to create pots they created baskets.

The teacher may add in at this point an interesting fact about how the Anasazi domesticated (may need to discuss meaning of this word) dogs and turkeys.

At this time the teacher should distribute the crossword puzzle to be completed in a group to check for understanding of the Anasazi culture.  The crossword should be completed by allowing the students discuss the answers and solve the puzzle. This is a good opportunity for the teacher to evaluate the understanding of the discussion about the Anasazi and allow for clarification to the students about the Anasazi culture and anything that may need to be clarified.                                                                                         

Response Activity: The response activity will be the completion of a word web. The teacher will pass out a web and describe how the web works. The teacher will explain to the students that they should be able to fill in all of the blank circles on the word web. The teacher should then demonstrate an example of how a completed web should look like. The students will be encouraged to use different colors and even draw pictures of the items with in the web upon completion of the circles in the web.

Conclusion: The teacher should restate some of the interesting things discussed during the lesson. Such as: Today we discussed what the Anasazi ate, can anyone name a few items that the Anasazi ate? (Different types of plants and meats) What are some things that the Anasazi people created to use as containers to hold foods and other materials? (pots and baskets) The teacher should then discuss that next class we further our understanding of the Anasazi culture by learning about their homes.