Silvério A. Barroqueiro
Objectives and Strategies
Objective 4: To learn the roots of the Aztecs, as one of the original Mexica tribes from Aztlan, the Place of Whiteness.
Objective 5: To be familiar with the history of the Aztecs, from their long migration from Chicomoztoc to their arrival at the valley of Anahuac in 1168, and final settlement 150 years later in their city of Tenochtitlan (Tee-noh-shtit-lahn).
Objective 6: To learn about the art, writings, religious customs, legends, mythology of the Aztecs. Understand what was the daily life of the Aztec on the eve of the Spanish conquest.
Objective 7: To understand the different roles males and females played in Aztec religious society. To compare with present day situation in Western Europe and Latin America.
Strategies: The lecture on the history of the Aztec and the lengthy pilgrimage through the desert in search of a spot of land with a cactus rock on which to build Tenochtitlan should be presented to the students via the codices, e.g., the Boturini Codex (Figures 1-4) and the Mendoza Codex (Figure 5). As a class project, students should be required to complete a codex of their own depicting the sequence of historical, religious, mythological scenes found in the curriculum unit such as the Pilgrimage to Tenochtitlan, the Mother Earth legends, the human sacrifices to the Sun and Maize gods, the Tempting of Quetzalcoatl and the Spanish conquest.
Classroom materials: Drawing paper and utensils; examples of codices found in books listed in the Teachers Bibliography in the curriculum unit.