People may participate in politics in many ways. They can write their Representative or Senator, or work in for a candidate or political party. They can make presentations to their local school board or city council, or call the police to complain about the neighbor's dog. Partly because of our federalist system, people have many opportunities to participate in our democracy on federal, state, and local levels. Some forms of participation are more common than others and some citizens participate more than others, but almost everyone has a voice in government.

When immigrants reach a new land, their old ways die hard. This has been the case with most immigrant groups to the New World. The language, customs, values, religious beliefs, and artistic forms they bring across the Atlantic are reshaped by the new realities of America and, in turn, add to its fabric. The rich traditions of Africa combined with the British colonial experience created a new ethnicity — the African American.

Students will review potential impacts of climate change on Michigan and determine both adaptive and individual mitigation strategies

This unit emphasizes the diaspora of human history.

Sixth graders are by nature a myopic people, and constantly in danger of not examining their own assumptions. Teaching large scale human history as a beginning to a closer study of culture, movement patterns and events allows students to understand the miraculous conditions that allowed humans to flourish. The perspective we take in this unit also challenges students to consider that the choices we make always provide a set of positive and negative consequences. In past pedagogy, the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture was taught as the catalyst of human progress. While that is not entirely wrong, it limits students' thinking by not considering the things we lost with this "opportunity cost."

In keeping with the new geography-heavy 2015 standards, this unit begins with a role-playing simulation that asks students to learn specific biomes to imagine they are plopped down in a certain region of the world, with nothing but a basic tool kit (no clothing, food, or shelter!). Right away students understand the complexity of early survival and the interrelationship with the environment. Then, building on the interpretive skills they learned in Unit one, student examine cave paintings to hypothesis lifestyle choices and necessities for early paleolithic peoples. Students recall the mapping skills learned in Unit One to get a visual perspective of the human diaspora in the next lesson, which maps the migration out of Africa, and sets the stage to understanding the next big topic: shifting from hunting and gathering to an agrarian way of life. But first, students will culminate their learning of early humans in an analysis of the issue of who gets the rights to study Kennewick man's remains.

**From the new AAPS 6th grade curriculum; written by Rachel Toon for ATLAS

The focus of this lesson is learning about the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of renewable energy resources and their potential use in Michigan. Students read about different renewable resources, watch a teacher demonstration, and match different kinds of energy sources with the advantages and disadvantages of each. Students then compare the advantages and disadvantages of renewable and non-renewable resources and use the comparisons to write a letter to their state legislators.