1st Timer of Big History Project Teaching Looking to Launch August 2025

Welcome to the amazing experience that is teaching Big History @Torin Warner! Like you, I also teach middle school (6th grade). When I started using the materials, I felt a little overwhelmed at the sheer amount of activities, articles, and videos available. What I like is that each year has looked slightly different as I adapt and change things to meet the needs of my students. It keeps me on my toes and keeps things fresh!

One suggestion I have is to come up with an organizational system to keep track of what resources and lessons you are doing. In my case, I have a table where one column shows the amount of class periods I will use, the middle contains teaching gols, guiding questions, links to slide decks or handouts, and the final column is where I record reflections or ideas for how I would modify the activities in the future. With the pace of teaching, this has been invaluable to help me remember things as I start a new year.

I would echo what @Donnetta Elsasser stated about the narrative. Using that as a through line to show the increasing complexity of the universe through threshold moments helps tie everything together. My students often ask - ‘Is this science or history class?” and it sort of becomes a running joke throughout the year because the content is so interdisciplinary. They really start to grasp the idea that our most accurate understanding of the past is achieved with multiple experts from a variety of fields. I think it makes them appreciate history even more!

The revamp of BHP has genuinely streamlined the thresholds, and I’m looking forward to incorporating these resources (which means less modifying to tailor the content to 6th graders-huzzah!). I would look at each unit and think about where you can make things exciting for your students to get them to connect. For example, I built off of the History of Me Activity by having students create a timeline of their lives. The twist? Instead of listing all of the dates, they come up with three “periods” that they can chunk their lives into. When they share, they paint he rationale. This helps them scale-switch to think about big picture instead of small details. It also makes for an awesome bulletin board at the start of the year.

I don’t want to get too wordy here, but feel free to to reach out if you want to see examples of activities or have specific questions on other ways I’ve tweaked things.

Thanks Meagan that was really helpfull! the history of me activity sounds very engaging! I definetly want to reach out again

Thanks Meagan that was really helpfull! the history of me activity sounds very engaging! I definetly want to reach out again

Sure thing, Torin! Just to circle back on the personal periodized timeline, here is a link to a super basic template that I provide for students (I make it very boring in the hopes that they will get creative with color/font/images/background/etc.), and here is a link to the rubric I use, and here are the slides that I use to introduce the project, which include my example. Feel free to copy and modify for your own use. I know it's helpful to see how a fellow educator takes a concept from idea to description to realization!

I like the periodization aspect of your timeline activity, that's something we at Selah High don't do (our timeline rubric).  We do have students identify "threshold moments".  I always like layering a few extra skills on top!  Thanks for this example Meaghan Mihalic 

Bryan Dibble I appreciate the rubric share. I'm always looking to streamline and improve mine; this is a good motivator to rework some things on mine that could be more clear. Thanks!