The Amazing Race through

Russian Nationalism Day 1.

Lesson Objectives: Through this lesson, students will engage in a fun web quest activity and

compete against each other in order to race through Russian history. The content that students

will examine in this lesson is the major events in Russia after 1815 and how nationalism

developed in Russia during the nineteenth century. This lesson is intended to be included in a

unit regarding nationalism in Europe. Other nations included in the unit are Germany, Italy, The

Ottoman Empire and the Austrian Empire. The concept of nationalism is to have been explained

to the students prior to this lesson so that aspects of nationalism will stand out through the

lesson. This lesson plan, is meant to take two days.

This is the first day of class, on this day students will compete to see who can complete a web

search the fastest. The main purpose of this is to allow students to learn about Russia in an

interesting way. The information that students gather during this class period will be focused on

throughout the next day of class, so that students will have the opportunity to connect lecture

material to the material in the activity on day 1.

Lesson Objectives presented in Blooms Taxonomy Format

Students will remember important points about Russian history.

Students will identify correct responses to questions that are posed in class.
Students will locate information about Russia in the 1800s using a designed websearch

by the instructor.

School Standards:
 a) I can explain the basic principles of the political thought movements of the 1800s-

liberalism and conservatism, and explain which populations supported each movement.

b) I can define nationalism and describe its origins and growth in Europe.

c) I can identify the causes and effects of the revolutions in the Balkans, France, Austria,

Russia and Germany and analyze the effects of nationalism or liberalism in these

revolutions.
Pre-instructional Activity: Coming into class, students will not have any idea what is about to

take place. I plan on introducing the activity to the students. Coming into the class period I will

have groups for the lesson planned out. After I have thoroughly explained the lesson to my

students, I plan to allow the students to get up and grab computers and organize into their

groups. Overall, the beginning of class should take about 10 minutes.

Directed Teaching: For the first day of instruction about Russia, the lesson will mainly consist

of aweb search. I will begin by giving each group of students a slip of paper with a question on

it. This slip of paper will have the phase of the project that students are on and three questions.

Each phase will take students through a section of the textbook chapter. The group that

completes the search fastest will win a prize, and then they will have the chance to copy down

the information that they searched for as notes.

Guided practice: Through this lesson, guided practice will consist of the web search that

students will complete in the lesson. This is a guided practice heavy day in class, however, the

following day will consist of note taking, critical analysis of a Primary Document, and

Discussion.
Differentiation of Instruction: The lesson will be differentiated in several ways. My non-
English speaking students will be placed together and given less questions to work though. This

is strategic, my non-English speaking students are from the middle east, and are still learning

how to speak English. This assignment is very reading heavy. All of the information that they are

being asked to do could be over whelming , therefore, giving them less material to look for will

make the assignment easier for them while still helping them to get comfortable with the English

language. Also, The questions they are asked to answer will be less based on context clues and

more on the basic information than the other students are working on. This is because context

clue questions can be challenging for students who have a hard time understanding English.

Another way that I plan to accommodate this lesson is for a student with autism. This student

does not work very well in a group, and while I plan to place her in a group, if she feels

uncomfortable and is unable to work under these conditions, I will allow her to work on this

assignment independently.
Closure: I plan to close this class period with a discussion about what the students learned

through this activity and preparing students for the following day of class. The importance of

this step is for students to connect the research they conducted today to useful understanding

about the course ccontent.

Resources:

Textbook: Prentice Hall World History From 1500 to Present, by Ellis Esler.

The websites used in this web search were:

www.historytoday.com

http://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/russian-revolution-topics/

www.history.com
Leg 1: The Russian Legacy

Question 1: What was the Social Structure like in Russia in the early 1800s?

Question 2: What was the Russian system of representative bodies in local

government??

Question 3: When did Alexander II take the throne? How?

Leg 2: Changes in Russia

Question 1: When was the Crimean War, who fought in it, and what was it about/

why did it start?

Question 2: In 1861, what did Alexander II do to help the serfs? Was it good?

Question 3: What is russification and why is it important?

Leg 3: Violence in Russia

Question 1: How did Alexander III respond to his fathers assassination?

Question 2: What was the cause of Bloody Sunday?

Question 3: Write a 3 sentence summary of the Revolution of 1905.