Lesson for a seventh grade ELA class:

• Brainstorm as a class:  What are some things that people believe in strongly.  (No ideas are wrong.  They don’t have to necessarily pertain to you.)
• Each student independently chooses one of the ideas we brainstormed or another idea people have strong beliefs about. (They should check with me if it is not already written on the whiteboard.)
• Give students the following scenario:
  1. People live in a town where everyone believes the same way. Other people take over the town, and they don’t share those beliefs.  The people of the town don’t want to change their beliefs.  What are some general rules the town might make to ensure that they are able to maintain their beliefs and still get along with the newcomers?
• Once students have written rules independently, I will have them share out at their tables. Each table will share their list of rules.
• Everyone else in the class will be listening, and they will cross off rules they have that are the same. If any of the rules are unclear, I will ask for clarification or for the purpose of the rule.  I will only have students share if they have a different idea.
• I will record the rules they’ve generated on a Google Doc.
• After this activity, students will read, the beginning of “The Pact of Umar: Regulating the Status of Non-Muslims Under Muslim Rule.”  (website shared from “The Jewish Virtual Library.”)
• I’ll ask students to consider the activity they just engaged in and how this scenario might differ from what they just brainstormed based on the context.
• Then, students will make a t-chart including similarities and differences between the rules generated by the class and the rules presented in the Pact.
• For rules that are different, I will ask students to consider why that might be the case based on the context. Students should record ideas for why each of these rules exists.
• Then, because students are studying the Bill of Rights in seventh grade social studies, students will work as a group to create a visual or graphic to display the differences and similarities between the two documents.  Even though the context is different, I will encourage them to think about the overall function of each rule.
• Finally, the students will write a metaphor to describe the similarities OR differences between the Pact and the Bill of Rights. The metaphor should include at least two reasons for the comparison.