Our Interconnected World

Did you use this for Our Interconnected World 1450 or 1750? I am this activity coming up and I might have to take this idea too! Great resources. I plan on using these this activity after the Columbian Exchange but I'm not sure if I should go ahead to 1750 or stick to just 1450.

Caroline Weiss Stiles I used the Our Connected World activity from Unit 3 of the 1200 course. It has components for both 1450 and 1750 as you "layer" the networks. I liked how those years are the bookends to Unit 3 in the 1200 course!

Anne, thanks so much for sharing the great slide decks for this activity! I will certainly use those next time I teach it. This was a great way to end the week on the Friday before spring break and a culminating activity for Unit 3.3.  We will start Unit 3.4 The Atlantic Slave Trade when we return on Tuesday.  

I only began the WHP 1200 in January because I teach at an early college high school and World History is taught the second semester, US history in the first. I wasn't sure about this activity as my class sizes vary greatly throughout the day from sixteen in the morning and two of my afternoon classes are only six and nine students respectively.  The great news is that the fun the kids had with this activity traveled among the students and the smaller classes also wanted to participate.  

I arranged the tables at the side of the room with continent names on the tables and had sticky notes with all of the countries mentioned in the activity on the front board.  This was another opportunity for geography practice and kids placed the countries in their approximate geographic locations on the continents.  We had great conversations throughout the activity, using the discussion questions posted in the handout and how the networks of exchange changed over time. By the third class I learned to have students each carefully ball up the yarn one a time, which became a fun game in itself.  

Carrie Rogers thanks so much for sharing, especially with the photos! I love seeing how these activities look in others' classrooms. I am actually prepping the WWI iteration of Our Connected World for tomorrow's class!

Just in case you ever have a small class that doesn't seem amenable to the full activity, I think using the narrative to do some annotated mapping might be an alternative option. 

This seems like a lot of teacher prep to do this and having students move desks to create the continents would take a long time. I feel that would take my kids at least 20 minutes. What if instead we gave each group a large piece of poster paper, had them quickly sketch out the world map, then illustrate the interconnection for 1 commodity, annotating the map as necessary with colored lines and symbols. Then present to the rest of the class. Not as fun as the yarn but a lot less chaotic. 

I'm introducing this activity just after a modified World Zone Cafe and before a micro-study of the role of women during 1450-1750 (graphic bios, and a Flocabulary video)  In my mind, I'm taking the birds-eye view with the cafe & interconnected world, then diving deeply into the personal stories of individuals. We'll see how this goes, Anne Koschmider 

In terms of the yarn -- I use scissors! We just cut the ties that bind us all, so we can get out of class at the end of class. I have some scrap yarn, so it's not really costing me anything, but I do consider the hidden costs of production ... so... sometimes, I'll have the students drop their yarn and I'll wrap it quickly around a square piece of cardboard (think smaller than a piece of letter-sized paper, cut from the case of paper or a cereal box)  I try to keep at least 6 balls of yarn in my room, so I can manage in those 'quick-changes' of back to back classes.  

I agree, Scott Marsden . While I'd love to see the classroom actually transform into a representation of the continents, I'd rather have the students doing the activity instead of prepping for the activity. 

I usually have six clusters of 5 desks in my room and simply label them in an east to west (ish) fashion for the 6 continents needed for this lesson. So the Americas will be the two clusters near the windows, Europe & Africa in the center clusters, and Asia & Oceania nearest the hall / door. 

Gwen Duralek I wasn't aware of that Flocabulary video - thanks for sharing! Does your district have a subscription to Flocabulary?

I post signs around the periphery of the classroom to roughly indicate where continents should go, so the process goes pretty quickly. It may not be the most realistic representation, but it gets kids examining the world map and thinking about relative location so I'll call it a win!