Kathryn Wymer - Social Studies Center



|Kathryn Wymer | |

|World History & Geography to 1500 A.D. |Philosophical Contributions from Ancient Greece |

Essential Questions/Concepts:

✓ What were some important contributions of Greek culture to Western civilization?

General Objectives:

Standards from the National Council of Social Studies

NCSS X: Civic Ideals and Practices

a) explain the origins and continuing influence of key ideals of the democratic republican form of government, such as individual human dignity, liberty, justice, equality, and the rule of law;

Standards from the Virginia Standards of Learning

WHI.5 The student will demonstrate knowledge of ancient Greece in terms of its impact on Western civilization by

f) citing contributions in drama, poetry, history, sculpture, architecture, science, mathematics, and philosophy, with emphasis on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle;

Learning Objectives:

✓ In their study of ancient Greece, the SWBAT interpret in an open-ended questionnaire Greek philosophy and its effect on daily life in ancient Greece and modern society (Application-Readiness).

✓ In their study of ancient Greece, the SWBAT analyze in an essay the specific traits of Socrates’ methodology (Analysis- Readiness).

✓ In their study of ancient Greece, the SWBAT hypothesize in an essay the purpose and intent of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Synthesis-Readiness).

Lesson Body/Content Outline:

|WHAT THE TEACHER DOES |WHAT THE STUDENTS DO |

|Set Induction: (5 minutes) |Set Induction: (5 minutes) |

|Click on the United Streaming video titled “Ancient Greek Philosophers”. Show |Students will watch the short 5:10 minute video about the three great Greek |

|this to the class as a review from the last class and introduction to the |philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. |

|upcoming differentiated activities. | |

|Objectives for the Students: (5 minutes) |Objectives for the Students: (5 minutes) |

|Due to the nature of this activity and the specified objectives, there will be |Students will be preparing themselves for the remainder of class. This is an |

|two, maybe three different activities going on simultaneously before in the |opportunity for us to understand the procedure for the next eighty minutes of |

|classroom. The first activity will be the struggling learners. They will work |class. It is important for us to see the final goal that we want to reach as a |

|closely with the teacher help to understand the role of Greek philosophy in |class. |

|ancient and modern life more clearly. The teacher will monitor their growth of | |

|critical thinking, so that they can move up to the “on grade” level activity. | |

|The second activity will be completed within each small group. The “on grade” | |

|students will have a brief explanation of the Socratic method on their worksheet;| |

|however, they are encouraged to use the internet (if available) to do further | |

|research. The third activity will be similar to the second, but the advanced | |

|learners will be thinking much more abstractly. The teacher might need to help | |

|them get started. | |

|Review: (5 minutes) |Review: (5 minutes) |

|Begin an open discussion with the students about the previous day’s lesson. What|This will be an open discussion and the students will raise their hands or shout |

|do they still remember? This could be a pre-assessment to see what needs to be |out the answers to the questions asked by the teacher. |

|reviewed and/or taught again. | |

|Guided Questions: | |

|What other cultural contributions did we get from the ancient Greeks? | |

|Can you give modern examples of those contributions? | |

|Lesson Body/Content Outline: (55 Minutes) |

|Struggling Learners |Grade Level Learners |Advanced Learners |

|[These students will work in small groups (3-4) and|[These students will work in small groups (3-4). This |[These students will work in small groups (3-4) and |

|begin reading over the passage on the worksheet |group requires the least amount of guided instruction, |begin reading over their passage on the worksheet |

|until the teacher joins them. Their specific |so their specific instruction will come first.] |until the teacher joins them. The instruction should |

|instruction will come third.] | |be minimal, so their specific instruction will come |

| | |second.] |

| |The teacher will give each student the Socrates |The teacher will give each student the Plato |

|The teacher will give each student a worksheet with|worksheet. Instruct them that they will need to read |worksheet. Instruct the students that need to read |

|a reading passage and a set of questions. Their |the passage, and use the six-step process to help them |the summary of the Allegory of the Cave and identify |

|preliminary instructions are to read the questions |answer the question in bold. |the problem that Plato describes in society. Explain |

|at the bottom of the page, and then begin reading |The students will work in their small groups to |that once they identify the problem, they need to use |

|the passages. |creatively problem solve. Afterwards, they will each |the six-step process as a guide to help them find |

|The students will work together to answer the |write an essay that describes the process they used and |solutions to the problem. |

|following questions on the SCAMPER worksheet: |its outcome. |The students will work in small groups to complete |

|A- What if these philosophers were not asking | |this assignment, and then individually write a |

|questions about large, practical concepts in | |multi-paragraph essay to describe the process they |

|regards to society, politics, and daily life? How | |used and their conclusions. |

|might that have changed the Greek empire? | | |

|M- What would the impact have been if these | | |

|philosophers did not established institutions that | | |

|taught these philosophies? | | |

|P- How else do we use Socrates’ form of questioning| | |

|in today’s world? | | |

|E- Socrates never wrote down his own philosophies. | | |

|Since Plato and Aristotle were the writers, could | | |

|we just eliminate Socrates from the list of great | | |

|Greek philosophers? Why or why not? | | |

|The teacher will monitor these groups closely. | | |

|When they are ready, they can begin the Socrates | | |

|worksheet. | | |

Closure: (5 minutes)

Ask the students to write a short reflection about what they did during the lesson. In three complete sentences, identify the most important information they learned and describe the creativity skill they utilized.

Summative Assessment:

The assessments for this class will be the final products from their activity during the class.

Materials Needed for the Lesson:

✓ “Greek Philosophy” worksheet

✓ “The Socratic Method” worksheet

✓ “The Allegory of the Cave” worksheet

Methods of Evaluating Student Progress/Performance:

Differentiated Rubric goes here!

Differentiation for Special Needs:

|Special Need |Form of Differentiation |

|Struggling Students |They will be working on the S.C.A.M.P.E.R. worksheet, which assesses the |

| |strengthens and impact of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It forces them to |

| |start thinking critically about the philosophers. The students already have |

| |prior knowledge, but they need structure before they are ready to think |

| |abstractly. This activity to meant to prepare these students to move up to |

| |the “on grade learners” group. |

|On-Grade Students |They will be working on the creative problem solving worksheet, which examines|

| |the purpose of the Socratic Method. They will also have prior knowledge of |

| |the philosophers, but they will use that knowledge to look at Socrates’ |

| |methodology. This will help the students have a better understanding of his |

| |theories and ideology. These students have already demonstrated the ability |

| |to think at an abstract level, but still need structure to work through the |

| |problem solving process. They will use the six-step format to reach their |

| |conclusions. |

|Advanced Students |They will be working on the problem-based learning worksheet, which examines |

| |Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The students will read a summary of the |

| |allegory, identify the problem that Plato suggests about society, and find |

| |possible solutions for this problem. It is understood that this is a |

| |difficult task, even for college students; however, the purpose is to have the|

| |students idenity ambiguous problems within a scenerio at use fact to find |

| |possible solutions. The students selected for this group already have |

| |demonstrated a strength in abstract thought and easily “think outside the |

| |box”. The activity is a challenge, not only for their growth of knowledge, |

| |but also for their growth of skills. |

Subject Matter Integration/Extension:

This lesson comes within the middle of a unit on ancient Greece. The particular SOL that this lesson applies to addresses other cultural contributions that were discussed in the lesson previous to this lesson. Since the standard wanted to emphasis these philosophers, a whole lesson block was designated to that concept. This comes towards the end of the unit, but the knowledge is essential during the Renaissance when the Greek philosophy is revived and revised by philosophers such as Locke and Hobbes.

Reflections:

This lesson is a handful to accomplish. It requires a lot of the students. It is meant to come after the teacher has worked with the students for a lengthy period of time and feels comfortable giving such critical thinking activities to the students. Especially with the activity about Plato and the Allegory of the Cave, some of these theories and philosophies are difficult even for college students to grasp. The object of these activities, besides having a better understanding for Greek philosophies, is practicing creative learning. Justified attempts can just be as successful and coming a “black and white” answer. It will be a challenge, but well worth it in my opinion

Bibliography:

Carr, Karen, PhD. Greek Philosophy—History for Kids! Retrieved October 23, 2006, from .

. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Retrieved October 23, 2006, from 's_allegory_of_the_cave.

World History: Ancient Civilizations. Discovery Channel School (2004). Retrieved November 15, 2006, from unitedstreaming:

Name ______________________________ Date _____________ Period/Block _________

|[pic] |Greek Philosophy |[pic] |

|A Brief Description of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle: (trust me, this is the short version!) |

|Ancient Greek philosophy is dominated by three very famous men: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. All three of these lived in Athens for most of their lives, and |

|they knew each other. Socrates came first, and Plato was his student, around 400 BC. Socrates was killed in 399 BC, and Plato began his work by writing down what |

|Socrates had taught, and then continued by writing down his own ideas and opening a school. Aristotle, who was younger, came to study at Plato's school, and ended |

|up starting his own school as well. |

|In the years after Plato and Aristotle died, in the 200's BC, three famous kinds of philosophy started up in the schools that Plato and Aristotle had started. |

|These are the Stoics, the Skeptics, and the Epicureans. Each of these continued to be important ways of thinking about the world all the way through the Roman |

|Empire, until people converted to Christianity in the 300's AD, and even after that. |

|[When] Socrates was in his forties or so, he began to feel an urge to think about the world around him, and try to answer some difficult questions. He asked, "What|

|is wisdom?" and "What is beauty?" and "What is the right thing to do?" He knew that these questions were hard to answer, and he thought it would be better to have |

|a lot of people discuss the answers together, so that they might come up with more ideas. So he began to go around Athens asking people he met these questions, |

|"What is wisdom?”, "What is piety?", and so forth. Sometimes the people just said they were busy, but sometimes they would try to answer him. Then Socrates would |

|try to teach them to think better by asking them more [questions, which] showed them the problems in their logic. Often this made people angry. Sometimes they even|

|tried to beat him up. |

|When Plato was a young man, he went to listen to Socrates, and learned a lot from Socrates about how to think, and what sort of questions to think about. When |

|Socrates was killed in 399 BC, Plato was very upset (He was 30 years old when Socrates died) . Plato began to write down some of the conversations he had heard |

|Socrates have. Practically everything we know about Socrates comes from what Plato wrote down. |

|After a while, though, Plato began to write down his own ideas about philosophy instead of just writing down Socrates' ideas. One of his earlier works is the |

|Republic, which describes what Plato thought would be a better form of government than the government of Athens. Plato thought that most people were pretty stupid,|

|and so they should not be voting about what to do. Instead, the best people should be chosen to be the Guardians of the rest. (Remember Plato was from a rich |

|aristocratic family so he probably considered himself among the best people!). |

|Plato also thought a lot about the natural world and how it works. He thought that everything had a sort of ideal form, like the idea of a chair, and then an |

|actual chair was a sort of poor imitation of the ideal chair that exists only in your mind. |

|When Aristotle was a young man, about 350 BC, he went to study at Plato's Academy. Plato was already pretty old then. Aristotle did very well at the Academy. But |

|he never got to be among its leaders, and when Plato died, Aristotle was not chosen to lead the Academy after him. Soon afterwards, Aristotle left Athens and went |

|to Macedon to be the tutor of the young prince Alexander, who grew up to be Alexander the Great. As far as we can tell, Alexander was not at all interested in |

|learning anything from Aristotle, but they did become friends. |

|When Alexander grew up and became king, Aristotle went back to Athens and opened his own school there, the Lyceum (lie-SAY-um), in competition with Plato's |

|Academy. Both schools were successful for hundreds of years. |

|Aristotle was more interested in science than Socrates or Plato, maybe because his father was a doctor. He wanted to use Socrates' logical methods to figure out |

|how the real world worked; therefore Aristotle is really the father of today's scientific method. Aristotle was especially interested in biology, in classifying |

|plants and animals in a way that would make sense. This is part of the Greek impulse to make order out of chaos: to take the chaotic natural world and impose a |

|man-made order on it. When Alexander was [traveling] all over Western Asia, he had his messengers bring strange plants back to Aristotle for his studies. Aristotle|

|also made efforts to create order in peoples' governments. He created a classification system of monarchies, oligarchies, tyrannies, democracies and republics |

|which we still use today. |

The following passage is a selection of excerpts taken from

Use your knowledge of these Greek philosophers to answer the following questions and better understand the purpose of these philosophies. Please answer these questions in full sentences on a separate sheet of paper.

1. What would the impact have been if these philosophers did not established institutions that taught these philosophies?

2. How else do we use Socrates’ form of questioning in today’s world?

3. Socrates never wrote down his own philosophies. Since Plato and Aristotle were the writers, could we just eliminate Socrates from the list of great Greek philosophers? Why or why not?

4. What if these philosophers were not asking questions about large, practical concepts in regards to society, politics, and daily life? How might that have changed the Greek empire?

Name __________________________________ Date _____________ Period/Block _________

The Socratic Method

In ancient Greece, Socrates wanted to learn about the world he lived in. He asked himself and people in his community about what was going on in society, daily life, politics, etc. He was so intelligent that he realized it would take a great discussion to answer these large questions, such as “what is beauty?” or “what is wisdom?” Socrates became famous for asking a series of question to help him come to conclusions. He believed that the answers to these questions were available, but it was the responsibility of the people to ask the right questions to get those answers. Asking a series of questions like this became known as the Socratic Method.

For a very simple example, if Socrates lived today in 2006 and wanted to know “why we wear shoes?”, he might ask the following set of questions:

1. What do we use our feet for? (to walk)

2. Where do we walk? (in our homes, outside)

3. Where do we walk outside? (on the grass, on the sidewalk, on the pavement)

4. What happens when you walk outside barefoot? (sometimes, you scratch/cut/scrap/step in something dirty on the bottoms of your feet)

5. How can you stop from scratching your feet when you walk outside? (put something between your feet and the ground for protect)

6. How could you attach that protection to your foot? (straps, ties, etc.)

7. What are shoes? (a covering around your foot)

8. What does that covering do to help your foot? (protects your foot from getting scratched/cut/scrapped/or dirty)

9. Therefore, you wear shoes so you can walk outside and have your feet protected? (yes… and the question is answered)

Creative Problem Solving

Directions: Use the six steps for Creative Problem Solving to answer the following questions. On a separate sheet of paper, I want you to write your responses to each of the steps to show me how you came to your conclusion. Finally, write an essay (that means complete sentences) describing the notes you took for each step.

How does the Socratic Method help us to understand our world better?

Step 1: Sort through the passage and find the larger problem

Step 2: Gather information about the problem

Step 3: Rewrite your original problem into a broad statement that will be more suitable for finding the big idea

Step 4: Brainstorm possible ways to solve the problem

Step 5: Pick a way from your “brainstorm list” to try to solve the problem

Step 6: Write out a plan of action to solve the problem. What are your outcomes?

Name ______________________________ Date _____________ Period/Block _______

Understanding Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Directions: Read the following summary of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. While reading this passage, consider the following: What is the problem that Plato is describing, and what was he trying to teach the reader with this allegory? After reading the passage, use the provided steps to help you analyze the allegory.

|Summary of the Allegory of the Cave |

|Imagine prisoners who have been chained since childhood deep inside a cave. Not only are their limbs immobilized by the chains; their heads are chained as well so that |

|their gaze is fixed on a wall. |

|Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which shapes of various animals, plants, and other things are |

|carried. The shapes cast shadows on the wall, which occupy the prisoners' attention. When one of the shape-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners |

|to believe that the words come from the shadows. |

|The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game - naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing|

|merely shadows of images. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who begin to play |

|poorly. |

|Suppose a prisoner is released and compelled to stand up and turn around. |

|His eyes will be blinded by the firelight, and the shapes passing will appear less real than their shadows. |

|Similarly, if he is dragged up out of the cave into the sunlight, his eyes will be so blinded that he will not be able to see anything. |

|At first, he will be able to see darker shapes such as shadows and, only later, brighter and brighter objects. |

|The last object he would be able to see is the sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as that object which provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides |

|over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen. |

|Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would want to return to the cave to free "his fellow bondsmen". Another problem lies in the other prisoners not wanting |

|to be freed: descending back into the cave would require that the freed prisoner's eyes adjust again, and for a time, he would be one of the ones identifying shapes on the|

|wall. His eyes would be swamped by the darkness, and would take time to become acclimatized. Therefore, he would not be able to identify shapes on the wall as well as the |

|other prisoners, making it seem as if him being taken to the surface completely ruined his eyesight. The other prisoners would then not go to the surface, in fear of |

|losing their eyesight. If someone were to try and force a prisoner to come to the surface, the prisoner would become murderous, and kill whoever tried to force him to come|

|to the surface. (The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey). |

The following passage is a selection from 's_allegory_of_the_cave

Plato is describing what he feels to be a significant philosophical problem in society. You may use the steps listed below to identify and solve that problem. On a separate piece of paper, write a multi-paragraph essay (this also means complete sentences) describing the problem you identified and the conclusion you reached.

Step 1: Sort through the passage and find the larger problem

Step 2: Gather information about the problem

Step 3: Rewrite your original problem into a broad statement that will be more suitable for finding the big idea

Step 4: Brainstorm possible ways to solve the problem

Step 5: Pick a way from your “brainstorm list” to try to solve the problem

Step 6: Write out a plan of action to solve the problem. What are your outcomes?

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