Teaching Critical Thinking through Big History - The Big Bang

There's got to be a million reasons why I love teaching Big History to my 8th graders. But the first and foremost is that it leads to wonderful discussions in the classroom - which afford me a peek into the minds of my students and how they are developing various skills. Another facet of the course is its strucutre and how it develops vital academic skills in students - critical thinking, evaluation, argumentation based on evidence, deep reading and high quality written communication.

We recently started up the 2nd Unit on the Big Bang. The first activity required students to think up of a natural disaster and then list causes that led to it - in the short, medium and long term.  The students worked for this assignment using the Breakout Rooms feature in Zoom. As I kept popping in and out of their rooms, I witnessed interesting discussions. One of the teams had chosen the 2004 Tsunami - they listed the earthquake in Indonesia as the immediate cause but were able to go back further into continental drift to use plate shift tectonics as a core reason. They were further back into the formation of the earth's crust and mantle to explain how plates were formed and are constantly moving even today - which led to the earthquake and therefore the tsunami.

The Vocab Wall activity was an incredible way to help students and deepen enhance their understanding of word meanings. Each student was assigned 2 words which they had to research - meanings, synonyms, antonyms and context. Words ranged from "parallax", "evidence", "intuition", "astronomical" & "hydrogen".  Then they had to browse the BH unit to find their word's usage in articles or activities. Finally we had a WORD WAR - where students had to justify using evidence why their word was the most important word in the entire unit. For this, the students really had to understand the context in which the word was used. Next, they had to identify another word in the list which was connected with their word. Again, they had to justify their connection. Students readily challenged each other's arguements. Some also stepped into to support a flailing classmate - which reflected a sense of empathy and connection. 

From there we dived deeper into understanding what the Big Bang was through videos and discussions. The article on Complexity provided a context for how each Threshold emerged through Goldilocks conditions which provided increasing complexity.  

Today we worked on understanding a graphical representation of the first threshold and students had to come up with interesting hashtags to briefly summarize their understanding. Hashtags ranged from #beginnings, #allmatter, #lifebegins, #whereallenergywas released.

We watched the Big Bang video and classified learning into the S-E-C model - Support - Extend - Challenge. For this activity, use used the Zoom Whiteboard where students could collaboratively add their ideas in real time. We discussed how it was easy to identify ideas which "Supported' our thinking and also those which "Extended" our thinking, but extremely difficult to find ones which "Challenge" our thinking. I told the students that they should constantly be aware and analyze the readings for such ideas and tease them out - a good pointer on metacognition and deeper thinking.  

For next time, they have to do a "Literature Review" by finding and reading articles on the latest scientific understanding of the Big Bang and make a group presentation. They have to use their newly learned skills on Claim Testing to evaluate the authenticity of the article and website by assessing whether the author of the article is an "authority" on the subject or not.  We discussed how "authority" can be achieved - through education, experience and reputation in the field, but how also, "authority" is sometimes attributed implicitly and incorrectly based on race, gender or socio-economic condition. This led to a discussion on how women scientists and mathematicians often have a battle on their hands to garner equal respect and authority for their work as men. 

Truly, teaching Big History can give any educator a well deserved buzz, especially in these trying times of school lockdowns. 

Workshop: Teaching Reading Comprehension

A child who can comprehend what s/he reads is well on the way of becoming an independent learner across disciplines. Such a child usually performs well academically and does not need much intervention in their learning process. However, it is a common misconception that reading comprehension will automatically develop with improvement in reading fluency. Another fallacy is that reading comprehension is a "natural process" for all children.

Children's learning can be scaffolded in different ways which will help them understand and extend what they read, a process which is especially for students who are struggling academically. Improvement in reading comprehension can help the children become independent learners and enable them to focus on higher order thinking skills, rather than wasting precious time memorizing what they haven't understood. This is especially relevant these days when online classes have become the norm and teachers struggle to help each and every child with their academics.

The workshop "Teaching Reading Comprehension" will cover a number of strategies and techniques which adults can use to help children with comprehension. The facilitator, Aneesa Jamal, is the founder of Al Qamar Academy, and has over 10 years of experience in teaching English effectively. Her students have rank in the top 10 percentile in national benchmarking exams, are often published in national weeklies and have authored books. Al Qamar Academy is well regarded for its robust English teaching program.

The online workshop will take place on 14th-17th October 2020 from 4:30-6:00pm.  Last date for registration is 11:00am on Tuesday 13th October 2020.

Registration Link: 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScdBYvRcqMjpPmRdj1QqphNF9ERZ7H1UU0lGl1lH7sOaj2DtA/viewform?fbclid=IwAR0TroBrArzCViEjSe48bARbmaUuuZWt4zlgXzvIDXUJa-ozE87UhVIiIsk

EXCURSION TO A CARDAMOM ESTATE

We went off on an excursion to a cardamom estate yesterday during our Small Science class. Virtually ofcourse, but highly enjoyable nevertheless. The cool breeze, swaying trees, scudding grey clouds framed the background of our visit to Shameema Farms in Peermade, Kerala.

We have been studying “Where our food comes from” in Small Science and learning about food, its constituents, how it is grown, farming, harvesting, pesticides etc. Had it not been COVID times, this would have been the right time to go visit a farm to actually see the process of farming. But a virtual visit was the only possibility. The one advantage of a virtual visit was that we could leave the confines of urban Chennai and travel to Kerala to our student Rafan’s family farm.

Rafan’s dad kindly took us around the farm showing us plants, pods, soil and the machinery through his mobile phone.  We learned about the entire lifecycle of cardamom farming. Planting is done in sections using new shoots from existing plants. The fertilized soil is left fallow during April and May until the rainy season in June/ July. The cardamom plant takes almost 18 months to give the first yield and 3 years for a proper harvest. He showed up the beautiful flower and the plump green cardamom seed pods. 

Abu Rafan explained how there are approximately about 4-5 harvests in a year starting from July and going all the way to December. The best harvests are the middle ones.  The children were astounded to know that the entire process of planting and harvesting is completely manual and there is a skill involved in recognising the seed pods which are ready to be harvested.

Abu Rafan told us that the cardamom plant is very delicate. It can be easily mowed down by strong winds and rain. He showed us how a bunch of plants had broken due to a recent storm. The plant is also very vulnerable to fungus and great care has to be taken to protect it from insects. Rats and frogs apparently love to eat the seed pod. Snakes abound. 

In the distance we could see tall tree trunks covered with pepper vine. Abu Rafan zoomed in to show us the pepper pods - a new experience for our students.

The children were busy asking questions in the chat box of Google Meet - “How much water is required?” “What insects come to the plant?” “What pesticides do you use? Don’t they harm the soil?”

We then moved onto seeing the machinery involved in processing the cardamom pods. The pods are dried at high temperatures for 14-16 hours and then rolled in a drum to remove extra stems and leaves. Thereafter the pods are packed and ready to go to the auction site. Abu Rafan explained how auctions take place since that was a burning question for the students along with the economics of the cultivation.  

Later Rafan shared some beautiful pictures of the wildlife at the estate - a shield tail, stingless bee and eye catching birds. This was a wonderful experience for our students especially those confined in their homes during COVID times. A little innovation and out of the box thinking can still make science learning highly engaging despite current constraints.

By Aneesa Jamal