One of my goals this year is to take lesson plans that I have done for awhile and give them a second look. Is there a better way to teach this? Is the question I am gong to ask myself especially with lessons that I have repeated over several years. The first lesson I want to look at is Origin Stories. After reflecting on what I do, I feel like my students walk away understanding one origin story really well and then the others fall short. In my lesson I ask each row to become a "mini expert," in one story then I create new groups and jigsaw the stories. My data shows they understand the one origin story they started with but lack any understanding of the other stories that were jigsaw in the group. Has anyone out there tried a better way to teach this important foundation concept of Big History?
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Jason Manning I did something very similar, I had the students break into groups and each group had a story. They had a couple days to retell the story in anyway they wanted. I often has skits, videos with stop motion, fake news show, puppet shows and art pieces all retelling the stories. While I do still think the kids in their particular group would often know their story better, the more creative the groups were, the more memorable it was for the rest of class. I don't think there is anything wrong with them not being experts on all the stories. I would always end with a class discussion connecting themes from the stories throughout and they could see the connections. I think your goal is great, I hope you have a fantastic year!
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HI Kimberly Milligan that sounds amazing! Can you tell me more about the fake news show or puppet show? Is there a chance you have a video of one of these? I would love to see it in action.
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HI Kimberly Milligan that sounds amazing! Can you tell me more about the fake news show or puppet show? Is there a chance you have a video of one of these? I would love to see it in action.
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That also reminds me that this could be an opportunity to ask the students to sketch their origin story or create a storyboard type of comic. I guess it just comes down to how much time one is whiling to allocate to this activity.
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Unfortunately I didn't record the puppet shows but I did find the slides that show the "scenery" for the puppet show that was made on google slides, the kids used that and sat on the floor: Zulu Scenery slides.
Here is an example of the kids drawing the story: Sumerian Origin art,
Here is a traditional slide show: Modern scientific slides. I'd love to see what your kids end up creating!