Description
What our Taj Mahal lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Taj Mahal is a high-interest reading comprehension lesson plan. As such, students will practice various close reading and comprehension skills. In addition, they will gain a knowledge of the history and significance of this incredible landmark and why it attracts millions of visitors every year. This lesson is for students in 4th grade, 5th grade, and 6th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the orange box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Teacher Notes
The paragraph on this page gives you a little more information on the lesson overall and describes what you may want to focus your teaching on. It explains that you can teach this lesson in a whole-class setting or as an independent, small-group activity. The blank lines are available for you to write out any thoughts or ideas you have as you prepare.
TAJ MAHAL LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
The Taj Mahal lesson plan includes three pages of content. Historians rely on experts to help them understand and write about history. These experts come from many fields, including engineering, medicine, and geology. Historians are like forensic scientists, similar to what you might see on popular detective television shows. They are always looking for clues and evidence to explain historical events. One of the things historians are curious about is buildings.
Seven Wonders of the World
Perhaps you have heard the terms “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World” or “New 7 Wonders of the World.” One thing you learn about historians is that they like to rank things, and buildings are no exception! One way to think about this is how sports enthusiasts like to talk about the greatest players of all time or which team is the best. For historians, ranking things is almost as much fun as talking about your favorite sports teams, singers, or videos. It might be hard to imagine that ranking buildings is that much fun, but to a historian, it is. And this is where the Taj Mahal comes in.
Like ranking sports teams, there are a lot of opinions about which structures should be included on the New 7 Wonders list. While there is no official list, the Taj Mahal is generally considered one of the New 7 Wonders of the World at any given time. The Taj Mahal is in India. Construction on this monumental structure took 22 years to complete.
What Is the Taj Mahal?
The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum. A mausoleum is an above-ground building designed as a burial place for the deceased. Construction began in 1632, following the death of the wife of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in 1631. Her name was Arjumand Banu Begum (also known as Mumtaz Mahal). Her name means “jewel of the palace.” Mumtaz Mahal passed away while delivering a child. The story is that Shah Jahan was so overcome with grief from her passing that he commissioned a grandiose building to honor her memory.
The building is considered by many to be a masterpiece of engineering, construction, and Mughal architecture. Every inch of the structure is a testament to Shah Jahan’s love for his wife. Historians estimate that more than 22,000 artisans and construction workers were involved in the task. Approximately 1,000 elephants were used to transport construction materials and supplies to the construction site. The cost to build the structure in Indian rupees was 32 million! A rupee in India is like a dollar bill in the United States. In the 1600s, that would have been an enormous sum of money!
Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal
The love story of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal is as interesting as the history of the Taj Mahal itself. The story began in the bazaar at Agra. A bazaar is a permanent, often large, marketplace with rows of small shops and stalls. Mumtaz was selling silks and beads when Jahan spotted her. He was captivated by her beauty and is said to have fallen in love with her at first sight. He courted her for five years before she agreed to marry him in 1612.
Mumtaz quickly became Jahan’s favorite wife. Tradition allowed men to have more than one wife, and Jahan already had two. Mumtaz was not only beautiful, she was also astute. Her family members were Persian aristocrats. An aristocrat is a member of a social class associated with a high social rank. They have political power and significant wealth. So, Mumtaz was well versed in palace protocol and politics. She advised Jahan on everything from politics and local issues to war. She even accompanied him on the battlefield, even though she was pregnant! It is easy to see why she was so dear to him and why the Taj Mahal had to be so grand in her honor.
When Mumtaz passed away, historians say that Jahan and his royal advisors mourned for two years. It was during the time of mourning that he planned the incredible structure known as the Taj Mahal. Gathering the best Muslim artisans, architects, and engineers, he tasked them with designing and constructing a mausoleum worthy of his wife.
The Structure
The Taj Mahal is a unique structure. It blends the styles of several cultures, including Indian, Asian, Persian, and Islamic. The building is made of white marble. The marble was transported by elephant or oxen 390 kilometers (roughly 245 miles) and cut into the shapes necessary for the hallways and the floor. The marble changes color throughout the day as the sun moves across the corridors. If you stand in the center, you can see the sun rise and set at certain times of the year.
There are four minarets on the corners of the structure. In Islamic culture, a minaret is a tall, slender tower attached to a mosque. The call to prayer is broadcast from the minarets, which are a symbolic, decorative part of the building. What is interesting about the Taj Mahal minarets is that they lean slightly outward. This was a design feature to prevent the minarets from collapsing during an earthquake and falling onto the main building, damaging Mumtaz’s resting place.
Another interesting feature of the marble structure is its cenotaphs. Cenotaphs are decorative, symbolic tombs located in the mausoleum’s central chamber. The cenotaphs are elaborately decorated with semi-precious stones. But these are not the burial sites of Jahan and Mumtaz. Their actual resting place is below the cenotaphs.
The Taj Mahal Today
As with many significant architectural structures, there are always unproven theories or stories about them. The Taj Mahal is no different! One is that Shah Jahan ordered the thumbs or hands cut off and the eyes gouged out of all the artisans who worked on the beautiful structure. Supposedly, that was to keep them from building a structure that rivaled the magnificence and grandeur of the Taj Mahal. Another myth is that he intended to build a second structure in black marble across from it, where he would be buried. There is no evidence to support this other than the fact that a large amount of cut black marble was found nearby.
One anonymous writer, after visiting the Taj Mahal, described it this way: “The Taj Mahal rises like a dream in stone, a luminous jewel set upon the banks of the Yamuna. Its marble skin shimmers with the hues of dawn and dusk, whispering secrets of love eternal. Minarets stand like sentinels, framing the dome that floats as if suspended between heaven and earth. The gardens breathe symmetry, a reflection of paradise mirrored in pools of still water. To behold it is to glimpse eternity itself, carved in white marble and veiled in silence.” Whether you view it as an engineering feat, an architectural triumph, an artistic achievement, or an eternal monument to Shah’s love for Mumtaz, the Taj Mahal certainly belongs in the list of Wonders of the World!
TAJ MAHAL LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Taj Mahal lesson plan includes two worksheets: an activity worksheet and a practice worksheet. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
COMPARE THE WONDERS ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
Historians have a hard time ranking the top wonders of the world in any significant order. For this activity, students will rank the New 7 Wonders of the World. Using the list, they will first research each wonder. Then they will rank them in order from the most magnificent (1) to the least (7), in their opinion. After that, they will discuss their choices with the class. Finally, students will vote for each one to see how their rankings stack up next to their classmates’.
TAJ MAHAL REVIEW PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet lists 10 questions based on the content. These questions all relate to the content pages, so students will need to refer to them often for the answers. In addition, each question provides which reading tool the question corresponds to, such as text feature, vocabulary, or comprehension.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes an answer key for the practice worksheet. Correct responses are in red to make it easier to compare with students’ answers. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
