Students will enter the project through a fast-paced Mesopotamia city-building simulation, then use their experience with maps, role cards, and source clues to generate investigation questions and plan how they will gather evidence for a museum exhibit about how Mesopotamian cities rose, changed, and fell.

Students will investigate settlement problems in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley, analyze clues from maps, timelines, and source cards, and use evidence to draft and refine a focused investigation question and testable hypothesis about how geography, religion, inventions, and government helped Mesopotamian cities grow and change.

Students will strengthen their investigation by organizing source notes from maps, timelines, short texts, and artifact images into a traceable evidence system, checking whether their evidence is balanced across major Mesopotamia topics, and revising their research plans after a midpoint peer audit.

Students will turn organized source notes into museum-ready historical analysis by refining claims, building evidence-based maps, timelines, and artifact captions, participating in structured peer critique, and rehearsing short oral explanations that address patterns, anomalies, limits, and new questions before the final showcase.

Students will present their completed Mesopotamia museum exhibits to classmates and invited adults, explain their evidence-based conclusions about change over time, and close the project with a brief self-reflection on strengths, challenges, and historical insight.