Americas Project

All students will participate in an interdisciplinary project during this unit. Four options are provided below. Complete the form to sign up for a project team.
Students modify these projects with permission, for example by changing which civilization is the focus.
Hands-on Craft
  • Team: 1-2
  • Reading: Page 461, Government Record Keeping and Ancient Incas Quipus
  • Task: Create a Quipus system with yarn
  • Details: Use colored string/yarn. Create a color key that identifies which strings are to be used for specific types of accounting. For example: red = student's age; yellow = the hour they wake up on weekends; blue = average number of hours per week they watch television. Then use strings to produce your record. Provide a way to indicate 10 of something -- for example, tying special types of knots (or coloring the knots with a marker) toward the top of the string.
  • Presentation: Be prepared to explain your system to your class and to discuss what problems such a system may have presented to the Inca.
Travel Itinerary
  • Team: 1-3
  • Reading: How to Create a Travel Itinerary for Your Boss and How to Create a Travel Itinerary
  • Task: Use Google Docs to create an itinerary for a trip to sites in the Incan Empire
  • Details: Conduct Internet research on travel sites to create a travel itinerary to the most important historical sites in the Incan Empire. Include transportation from Detroit and at least seven days of places to visit. For each place, write 100 words in description of the site in the style of the travel itineraries shown below.
  • Presentation: Create your page in Google Docs. Format it neatly as shown in the samples below with headings, colors and images for each day's events.
  • Samples: Do a search for "Incan Tour"
    Sample 1 | Sample 2 | Sample 3
Artistic Mural
  • Team: 1-2
  • Reading: Quetzalcoatl
  • Task: Create a mural based 
  • Details: Your mural should be based on the reading selection, so pay close attention to and take notes on the significant visual imagery of the passage. Illustrate parts of the story or tackle the story in its entirety. Think about what artistic techniques you can use to express different parts of the story. For example, to show the importance of an event, you might place it in the center of the mural, use brighter colors or increase its size.
  • Presentation: Be prepared to explain your artwork to your class and discuss what specific historical symbolism is represented.
  • Samples: Do a search for "Aztec Mural"
    Sample 1 | Sample 2 | Sample 3 | Sample 4
Dramatic Performance
  • Team: 2-3
  • Reading: Montezuma II: Defeated Priest-King
  • Task: Create a skit
  • Details: Think carefully about the quotation in the introduction of the reading. Use information from the reading and your textbook to create a dramatic dialogue that elaborates on the quotation. Imagine the quotation is just a small part of an extended conversation or argument that Montezuma II and Cotes has about their beliefs. Think about how the political position of each many might influence what he says.
  • Presentation: Write a script for your skit. It should be detailed enough to last at least two minutes. Record a video of your skit and upload the file to YouTube.