Ancient Hawaii Lesson Plan: Human-Environment Interaction: Place, Regions, and Culture

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This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Ancient Hawaii, and supports the standard of explaining how cultural patterns and economic decisions influence environments and the daily lives of people. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of projects.

Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Ask students:

• What ancient civilizations have you learned about?
• What do you know about Ancient Hawaii? What do you want to learn more about?

Step 2: BUILD KNOWLEDGE

• Read the description on the Ancient Hawaii topic page.
• Play the Movie, pausing to check for understanding. 

Step 3: APPLY and ASSESS 

Assign Ancient Hawaii Quiz, prompting students to apply essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.

Step 4: DEEPEN and EXTEND

Students express what they learned about Ancient Hawaii while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs.

• Make-a-Movie: Produce a documentary that explores the role of social class and mana in Ancient Hawaiian society. Cite specific examples to support your ideas. 
• Make-a-Map: Create a concept map identifying different aspects of Ancient Hawaiian society, and describing the significance of each.
• Creative Coding: Code a newscast that reports on the arrival of James Cook, and its impact on Kamehameha’s campaign to unite the islands under his rule.

More to Explore 

Queen Lili’uokalani: Watch the Queen Lili’uokalani movie, to learn what happens next, and to place Kamehameha I’s reign in context. 

Ancient Cultures Unit: Continue to build understanding around [theme] by exploring more BrainPOP topics on Ancient Civilizations.

Native America Unit: Continue to build understanding around Indigenous civilizations and the clash of cultures by exploring more BrainPOP topics on Indigenous peoples around the world.

Teacher Support Resources:

• Learning Activities Modifications: Strategies to meet ELL and other instructional and student needs.
• Learning Activities Support: Resources for best practices using BrainPOP.