Welcome to the Summer Course

Modern - Islamic History

for Primary Grades!

This course is designed for grades 1 through 4.

The summer course runs for 6 weeks, with 2 lessons each week, and is a condensed and abridged form of our Primary Grades Book 4 Modern for Primary Grades, and will cover cover the following topics:

Week 1: Fall of the Ottoman Empire

Week 2: Muslims in the World Wars

Week 3: From Colonies to Countries

Week 4: Israel & Palestine

Week 5: Iran-Iraq War + Gulf War

Week 6: 9/11 & Afghanistan

For a more comprehensive course, integrating Islamic history into global history and teaching several 21st century skills, graphic designs and different note taking formats, sign up for our academic courses running from September to June!

What do you learn in this course:

The Modern Islamic History

The geographical context of the historic events

The historical context of current day issues

How to extract information from graphics

Time lining

Activities

The Summer Course – Modern program includes the following: 

• Live Lessons on Zoom
• Chapters from History Connections Book 1 – Primary Grades 
• Pages from History Intersections

Classes run Tuesday & Thursday 11 am PST

Starting July 9th 2023!

Sign up before July 1st to get the Early Bird Discount

Elements in the lessons:

Inquiry: throughout this curriculum, students learn how to ask questions and extract information from images and maps. They will generate questions before doing any reading. This is called Inquiry Based Learning. Learning how to ask the right question is half of the success of research.

In book 1 through 3, parents have been modeling this skill with increasing participation of the student. In book 4, students will organize their independent inquiry questions a bit more in detail. They will categorize their questions into What, Who, When,

Where, Why and How, using Inquiry Sheets to organize their thoughts. During the reading process, more questions may come up and should be added to their sheets. Initially, students are merely required to come up with one of each type of question, and find the answer to this question in the paragraphs read.

As they progress, they may transition from the inquiry sheets to a notebook should they desire to do so.

Discussion: Discussion questions help students recap the major events in a story and practices comprehension. 

This is not an exam or a drill. These questions are intended to consolidate what the child learned from the text. The child can look at images in the book when answering the questions.

Reading: Learning how to read a historical text is a skill that will benefit a student throughout his/her life. The goal is not to read as many paragraphs as possible, but to read each paragraph with attention, looking to extract information.

Since reading levels widely vary between students, we give suggestions where needed for those with lower and higher reading levels. However much a student manages to read, please praise and encourage the student for their efforts, with a focus on the effort to understand the information embedded in the text.

Reading a text phonetically, without understanding is not the goal of this program. Initially, extracting information from a written text may require a substantial effort from the student, depending on the familiarity and reading level of the student. Therefore, going slow is not a problem, as the goal is to master the skill of extracting information.

Activities: Every week the child will complete an activity that relates to the topic of the week. This will help students internalize the information covered. Activities are varied and alternated, in order to keep students engaged. Doing activities teaches young children different skills and abilities, such as fine motor skills, strategic thinking, hand-eye coordination, and deduction.

Tracing a Map: The program asks the child to trace the Location Maps (provided). The action of physically tracing a map assures the information is integrated into memory. Please assure you have tracing paper available. The mapping activity allows students to get familiar with geography and teaches them to pay attention to certain geographical landmarks, such as rivers and seas, mountain ranges and oceans.

One Ummah: In order to make it clear that events on one continent may affect Muslims on another continent, we use the One Ummah Poster. Truthfully, in the global society we live in, everything is connected to everything else, but we chose to highlight certain events that affected Muslims around the world directly.

It is essential for students to be able to visualize information, so they will stick 1 or 2 images on selected topics that affect Muslims on a large poster.

History Connections

History in Context

Our history program is called History Connections, because learning history is all about connections: connections to the past, and connections to each other. Knowing what happened in the past helps us make sense of our present. Knowing how we fit into the larger global history, helps us connect to others. Knowing our heritage gives us a place to belong. Knowledge of history even gives us a basis to determine future actions. Currently, the world has become a global community, making global history all the more pressing. This program focusses on teaching 21st century skills, rather than rote memorization of facts, as this teaches students important skills to function in the modern society of the future.

Our History Connection series covers the ancients all the way up to the modern history and current issues. This series is intended for grade 1 through 8.

Every year students will take a chunk of this history. In the first book, students will cover from Creation to about 500 C.E. In the second book, they will cover from 500 C.E. until about 1650 C.E. The third era will cover from 1650 C.E. until the Industrial Revolution, approximately 1850 C.E. The last era, the Modern Era, will cover from 1850 C.E. until our current day.

All Eras have Islamic History integrated within global history, with more attention and time spend on important topics in the history of our Ummah.

The four books in this curriculum are consecutive, not only in chronological information but also in building skills.