Study a few civilizations and your students will quickly note a pattern. Humans tend to settle next to rivers. The Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Yangtze, the Seine, the Thames, the Mississippi, and so on. My family lives right by The Columbia! The reasons are obvious. People need fresh water. The food and transportation are pretty convenient too.
Since this is such an early part of a civilization’s development, my students would design their river as a second step in the Create A Civilization process.
First, Teach About Rivers!
Of course, we’d learn a lot about real rivers. Teachers gotta teach! And this is naturally cross curricular. We get to see how The Nile impacted (and continues to impact) Egypt, but we also learn about the science of rivers. (Psst, the study of rivers is called Potamology.) We’d learn vocabulary like delta, mouth, floodplain, watershed, oxbow lake, and so on. Heck, you could also read literature related to rivers. Hello, Mark Twain!
Analyze
I love Analyze. I think it’s the most critical step of Bloom’s. We might ask students to partner the various rivers we’ve studied. If a river was going to pick a friend, which other river would it choose? You’ll see lots of interesting thinking here as your students compare and contrast and categorize rivers. Now, obviously, they’ll need to know about a bunch of rivers in order to be successful with this level of thinking!
Students Synthesize
Then, once students have thought extensively about rivers, they can move on to create a river that their civilization will settle next to. I’d have them pick one of the real rivers they find most interesting and then make small changes to create their own version of that river. Jimmy might create a remixed Nile called the Jile for his civilization. Perhaps it also floods, but in a different way than the Nile. Perhaps it has no cataracts, making it easier for transportation.
This is an example of Synthesis. We starting with reality and then make small changes to create something new. We don’t start from square one and just say, “Make a river!” We will get cruddy results. Be careful not to jump to create too quickly.
Some students will make big changes. Some will make small changes. This is how we differentiate!
In the end, your students will create a new river that will impact their own civilization in positive and negative ways.