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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This is a fabulous way to introduce origin stories to our students combining visual, kinesthetic, and inquiry processes. It triggers their curiosity and predisposes them to learn more about it. I will adopt it next year. Where did you get the posters? Are they available in the website?
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Jason Manning One thing that I found that has helped my students with Origin Stories since it would take 6th graders forever to read all of them, are some animated versions from the website, BIG Myth. The animations are between 3 to 7 minutes in length, and cover most of the readings in BHP, but also have others from around the world. Here is how we set up the Origin Stories Readings & Animations during day 1, and then the Origin Stories Comic Strips Project on day 2 (time permitting, day 3 is a gallery walk that has students compare and contrast their chosen Origin Story to at least 2 others).
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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!
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Charles Rushworth , this is a great technique for origin stories. I have used it (or something similar) with other topics. But it never occurred to me to use it in this situation. Nice!
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My teaching partner and I use a "thinking routine" (Ritchhart 2011) called Color Symbol Image (CSI), which emphasizes reasoning by analogy. We listen to all of the origin stories as a class, and students document one color, symbol and image that represents each origin story (they do this 8 times). In addition, they need to be able to explain their thinking on why they chose each one. While the activity may not develop a deep understanding of all of the origin stories, it does push them to think about what is essential to each story.
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Mark Riniker Woah, I have never heard of this. Sounds really cool, now I have homework!
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Jason Manning Jason, you have garnered many useful responses to your question. Several of us share your quest to strengthen instruction with material we already use. I have found that I get good work from students when I ask them to use the chart template to collect information from three origin stories (I ask students to select three stories to explore), then I ask students to write how the stories compare and contrast in their features; one of the stories must be the modern science origin story. I also use this material to help students strengthen their ability to write arguments statements. As we go through the year, I find that we use the term "origin story" often, as our understanding of the world around us changes, due to new evidence, ways of thinking, and technology.
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Hi Gregory Dykhouse thank you for your feedback and for driving home the point that when you teach a big history concept it helps to reinforce that thread throughout the school year. Using the term "origin story" when introducing new concepts keeps the narrative alive.
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We follow up on this with having the kids write their own stories, then they draw another student's story. Next, we hang up the drawings and the student have to find their own story in the drawings. Easier said than done.
Here is a link to the CSI page we made.
