I love this plan and am going to absolutely steal it. :-)  I struggle with not spending enough time on this fascinating part of ancient world history. Your plan makes it easy to at least start the wondering.  Maybe, after the jigsaw of great learning you describe,  we could end it by asking, if you could be transported back and had to choose one of these three areas to settle with your family -- which would you choose?

 Erin Cunningham I love this lesson and the way you structured it to transition from individual work to class discussions and then to partner activities. It flows with a rhythm that makes it very dynamic.

Last year I created different options for each of my class periods, where students had to compare civilizations. This is one of the comparisons.

Denise Ford steal away! If you do anything differently, please share. I think you'll get a lot of good responses if you asked students where they'd want to settle--these three articles had good engagement from students. I think the novelty helped.

Laura Massa , I spend so much time comparing Rome and Han Dynasty China that it's never occurred to me to compare Rome to an American society. Definitely something for me to consider next year. Thanks! 

Erin,

You mention a map in your original doc you share with the students.  Which map do you use?