1. Spencer Ziegler

2. Unit Summary  Students will select from five potential African countries to research. Over the next few days, they learn about how that country governs its citizens. In groups, students will share what they found with others that chose the same nation and create together a presentation to teach the class about their topic. For the presentation, students will teach the class a basic task in the style of their government. Throughout this simulation they reveal information about their country as the class takes notes on a handout the group created earlier. We wrap up the unit with a discussion on the effectiveness of the various governments.

3. Curricular Framing Questions  Essential Question: How do societies make decisions?  Unit Questions: What is the best way for a country to govern its citizens? How do you efficiently locate valuable resources online? How does geography impact governments?  Content Questions: How do Morocco, South Africa, Madagascar, Somalia and Cameroon govern their citizens? How do the governments of Morocco, South Africa, Madagascar, Somalia and Cameroon compare with each other? Why do these countries have these particular forms of governments?

4. Vision for Unit  In this unit, students will… Learn that Africa is not a monolithic society Improve their time-management skills while researching individually. Become better collaborators while working in groups. Consciously consider how people learn when creating their presentation.

5. 21 st Century Skills  This project will provide students with the skills they will need in the future by: Teaching them how to research online properly (boolean operatives, custom search engines etc.) Using social bookmarking (Diigo) Cloud based collaboration (Google Docs) Creating a bibliography online (Easy-Bib)

6. Gauging Student Needs Assessments  What? I’ll use a board-talk and KWHL to assess what information students already know about these particular African countries and governments?  Why? To help me modify my unit to better serve students’ needs and interests  When? I’ll use these two procedures at the beginning of the unit and follow up with formative assessments throughout.

7. Help!  I’m not quite sure how to handle the note- taking the students will do during presentations. Should I have prearranged handouts that the groups have to base their research around? Or should I place the responsibility on the students and have groups create their own handouts, based on their research?  What tasks should students complete for the simulation? Same task for each group, or they decide themselves?