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The Croods and my Frame within a Frame!

Drew Fortune

Hi everyone! I wanted to share a framework I use for teaching the evolution of communities and that frame, which has been a big hit with my students and continues to evolve.

We start with the Individual, focusing on the basic needs for survival. From there, we explore the Family as the next stage of the community. To make this engaging, I show the first 10 minutes of The Croods, it works great with talking about Foraging because the first 10 minutes is a scene of them hunting with incredible athletic ability.

Next, we discuss Villages and debate a key question:

"Did villages form because of farming, or did farming come because of villages?" (I tie this in with the Archaeology Comparison Activity from the OER resources.)

After villages, we move on to Cities, and our working definition of a civilization is "life in cities." From there, we expand to States (what students know as countries) and finally to Empires, which we define as the largest form of community.

We use this “frame within a frame” throughout the semester, adding to it as we move through history and on the board it just looks like this: I->Family->Village->City->State->Empire. Bob Bain's old video on here for the kick off to Era 3 was the start to presenting it this way for students.

Any ideas or things you think I might be missing with this approach to the community framework?

  •   teaching the evolution of human settlement and the progression from villages to cities and empires is not easy to accomplish but your approach is super interesting and well thought. I don't teach Frames but this year I used the article Growth of Cities that resulted in an intriguing article to read and discuss in class. Maybe you can use it as a supportive material to this frame within a frame.

  • I think it would be cool to allow for a conversation or study on "working backward." This would tie in with the "Collapse and Restructuring."  When the sequence begins to go backward (obviously, not the perfect term here, but in reference to the listed progression), where does the sequence pause?  In other words, when an empire falls (restructures, collapses, changes), does life revert to that of states? cities?  Do people finally chuck it all and take their families into the hills?  

  • in reply to Denise Ford

    That is the question, right! What happens after collapse and how far back does the community fall? Does an Empire break into smaller States? Does the State just become a collection of Cities warring over resources? Does the City turn into ruins and families create bonds and form villages? Does the family hit the hills? 

    We do tie it into our Era 4: Collapse and see how different societies responded to different issues and causes of collapse. 

    I think of these quotes during the 1940s in when warfare was advancing so far and humanity hit a moment with atomic weapons:

    "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones"-Albert Einstein

    "We're going to bomb the back to the Stone Age" -Curtis LeMay 

  • Thank you for sharing what part of The Croods you show! I will have to watch this clip and see if I can roll this out in a similar way. The past couple of years students have made comparisons to the movie, but I have never watched it. You have inspired me to finally sit down and watch it! Sounds like a great way to hook students in!