Encourage tinkering with ideas, relationships, connections. Set up situations where students have to find information not readily available in school texts. Provide opportunity for students to design open-ended explorations of the concept. Provide multiple options so students can plan a unique "proof" of learning.

Project Centers

Objective: Students will discuss life under an absolute monarch and plan a group presentation.

Activity: Divide students into groups of three or four. Try to combine people who answered questions about different monarchs during the previous segment of the lesson. Have students discuss their answers to question number 4 (How do you think this monarch’s subjects felt about him?) Have tehm make a list of their answers. Then have them list actions they feel those living under an absolute monarch would be likely to take.
When their discussions are over and their lists are made have each group plan a creative presentation depicting life in the United States if the country was suddenly taken over by an absolute monarch. Their project can be a dramatic scene, short-story, poem, song, or cartoon, but all should emphasize life for an average person under an absolute monarch.

Assessment: Motivated. Students should be eager to apply what they have learned about absolutism in a creative project.