Teachers: This website provides lesson plans and resources for you to teach this unit on Zapotec history!
Unit Overview
Zapotec Trek is a fourth grade cross-curricular unit that incorporates social studies, English language arts, and math content. The central theme involves students in thinking like archaeologists and historians, as they learn about Zapotec culture. With that background, students will interpret observations about artifacts and reflect on daily life during the era when Monte Alban was a thriving city. The Zapotec Trek unit content is driven by national content standards in social studies, and the new Common Core Standards for English language arts and math. Because there are no Common Core Standards for social studies, the key instructional objectives are based on history standards from the National Council for History Standards and geography standards from National Geographic Xpedition. This unit incorporates interactive multimedia activities and downloadable resources for teachers and students to use in the classroom. On this website, you will find lesson plans with support materials for preparation, implementation and assessment of all the activities. The website also contains all of the necessary technology resources including e-learning modules, videos, artifact galleries and other images and links.
The unit comprises five lessons:
Lesson One - A video introduction to the field of archaeology and a hands-on simulated dig
Lesson Two - Interpreting informational text and video
Lesson Three - Math lesson on area of irregular shapes
Lesson Four - Artifact analysis
Lesson Five - Essay writing
Before beginning the unit, if you have wall space, set up a bulletin board for vocabulary word bank, class discussion responses and student work related to Zapotec Trek.
The unit comprises five lessons:
Lesson One - A video introduction to the field of archaeology and a hands-on simulated dig
Lesson Two - Interpreting informational text and video
Lesson Three - Math lesson on area of irregular shapes
Lesson Four - Artifact analysis
Lesson Five - Essay writing
Before beginning the unit, if you have wall space, set up a bulletin board for vocabulary word bank, class discussion responses and student work related to Zapotec Trek.
Student Assessment
To facilitate assessment, all teacher observation notes can be made on one rubric (pdf file below) and updated for each lesson. Final observation/participation notes can be transferred to student portfolio rubric. Each student folder should have a Student Portfolio Rubric (pdf file below) to assess all written work. Students will reflect on their learning after each lesson in their field notebooks (pdf file under Lesson One) and can assess their teamwork skills and goals with a Self-Assessment Rubric (pdf file below).
Download Files for Student Assessment
Teacher Observation Rubric
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Student Portfolio Rubric
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Student Self-Assessment Rubric
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Before You Begin
We hear so much about the Mayan and Aztec cultures, but there were many indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica, including the Zapotec culture, which continues to thrive in Oaxaca today. Before you teach this unit, you may want to do some background reading on Mesoamerican and Zapotec history. These sites will give you an introduction:
General Mesoamerican History:
General Mesoamerican History:
Click on the image below for a short general introduction
to Mesoamerican history. There is also a link embedded
in the article to a longer piece for those who want more in-
depth information.
to Mesoamerican history. There is also a link embedded
in the article to a longer piece for those who want more in-
depth information.
Click below for an interactive timeline from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
which provides a quick overview of Mesoamerican history.
which provides a quick overview of Mesoamerican history.
Zapotec History:
Click below for an article on Mixtec and Zapotec history
Click below for information about Monte Alban and Zapotec history.
(CyArk website also includes information about their efforts to virtually
preserve Monte Alban along with detailed descriptions of structures on the site.)
(CyArk website also includes information about their efforts to virtually
preserve Monte Alban along with detailed descriptions of structures on the site.)