Unit 1 Guide
Unit 1 Guide
2Unit 1: What Is Big History?What’s so big about Big History? It explores all 13.8 billion years of the Universe’s history. But it’s also about students, and the tools they’ll need to examine this history—like scale switching and claim testing. Students will learn about the core concepts of Big History, such as thresholds of increasing complexity, and they’ll figure out how they fit into this 13.8-billion-year story.
Unit 1 Learning Objectives1.Students will evaluate their place in the Big History narrative using the concepts of thresholds of increasing complexity and scale. 2.Compare the Big History origin story with other types of origin stories. 3.Create mental maps to organize information about places, environments, and people at different scales. 4.Define claim testing and practice using the claim testers to evaluate a claim or resource. 5.Practice writing claims.For individual lesson learning objectives, please review the lesson teaching guides.
Big Questions In this unit, students will consider this Driving Question: How does learning about the history of the Universe help us understand our past, present, and future?
Lessons Overview Lesson 1.1 Welcome to Big History: How does learning about the history of the Universe help us better understand the world today?Lesson 1.2 Scale: How does looking at things from different scales of time and space help us understand the past?Lesson 1.3 Origin Stories: What are some of the similarities and differences between the Big History origin story and others?Lesson 1.4 Claim Testing: How can claim testing help us evaluate the past, present, and future?Follow the links above to explore each lesson in this unit. Look for this symbol. to find the lesson guides, which provide teacher guidance, including sample answers.
6Teaching Tips
OpenersYou’ll find quick opener activities like these at the start of each lesson. They’ll help students preview the upcoming material and engage their prior knowledge. Although we’ve written them to align with the content of each lesson, feel free to swap in any openers/do-nows/bell-ringers that you already use! For more information, check out Openers and Closers Quick Tips.
ActivitiesActivities are an important part of OER Project lessons and serve to build student understanding and engagement. Activities provide an opportunity to get students moving and “doing” history through exercises like informal writing, group work, simulations, and debates.Progression activities appear in multiple units and are based on geographic and historical thinking skills like claim testing and causation. Each activity in a progression is meant to be more sophisticated than the one before, challenging students but also supporting them as they do this work.For all activities in OER Project—except for some openers and closers—teachers can find directions and sample answers in the accompanying lesson guides. Click here to learn more about activities.Click here to learn more about historical thinking skills.
ReadingsBig History includes articles written by a diverse group of scholars. Some of the reading involved in OER Project courses can be challenging, but it’s vital for engaging with the course content. All texts in the course—other than those that are part of DBQs (document-based questions) or are primary source materials—have been Lexile leveled, and each article has three or four versions to accommodate students of all reading abilities. OER Project provides Guiding Questions alongside each reading. These questions encourage students to approach the text at three levels—first by skimming the text, next by reading to answer Key Idea questions (“While You Read”), and finally by evaluating the text through “After You Read” questions that encourage connection and synthesis. For more information, see our Reading Guide.
Thresholds of Increasing ComplexityUnit 1 introduces students to Big History’s thresholds of increasing complexity. This course is built around eight thresholds, or moments in the history of the Universe when precise ingredients came together under Goldilocks Conditions (the “just-right” conditions) to create something new and more complex. The thresholds help students organize the vast amount of information they will encounter in Big History, giving them a framework to help make sense of all the ways in which someone might tell the history of the Universe. As students move through the course, they'll examine how each threshold marks a turning point in the story of the 13.8-billion-year Universe.
Geographic and Historical Thinking SkillsThe integration of skills and content is foundational to OER Project courses. Skills development is just as important—if not more—than content knowledge for student thinking and learning in social studies classes. Throughout this course, students encounter numerous, scaffolded opportunities to practice causation and making and testing claims. Practice progressions are made up of two categories: progression activities and thinking tools. Each step in a progression is more sophisticated than the one before, challenging students along the way but also supporting them as they do this work. Learn more in our Historical Thinking Guide. In Unit 1, students will be introduced to geography terms and concepts as they explore Mental Maps.
AssessmentOER Project values a comprehensive approach to assessment. We embed assessments throughout the course. Every activity is developed to allow students and teachers to gain insight into their understanding. Our course gives teachers many opportunities to review student work—both formally and informally—and find opportunities for improvement and enrichment. However, all assessments are optional and to be used at the teacher’s discretion. We also stress the use of rubrics throughout the course. We provide a set of rubrics for teachers to use for giving consistent feedback to students on their participation in discussions, their presentations, and on their writing. We also provide a standardized set of “thinking tools” to help students understand the goals and targets of each activity.OER Project does not provide guidance on grading. Teachers know their students, instructional context, and routines best, and are without doubt in the best position to assess them fairly.Learn more in our Assessment Guide.
WritingAt OER Project, we encourage students to write. A lot. At times, we want them to write informally, to express their initial understandings. Other times, we have them write formally, to solidify their thinking and refine their arguments. In this unit, students will write informally, responding to prompts in multiple activities and answering the Driving Question for the unit. They will also work on their claim-writing skills by taking a prompt and breaking it down to help them formulate a claim or thesis statement. Click here to learn more about our writing approach.Click here for informal writing routines.
Unit NotebookUnit Notebooks are found throughout this course and offer a great opportunity for informal writing and assessing understanding. The aim of these activities is to keep students and teachers connected to the core themes of the unit. The first time students encounter the Unit Notebook (Unit 1 Notebook: Part 1), they’ll be asked to evaluate each of the statements based on what they currently know. The second time they encounter the Unit Notebook (Unit 1 Notebook: Part 2), they’ll be asked to more thoroughly respond to the questions and revise and refine their initial understanding of the unit’s core concepts. The emphasis here is for students to focus on concepts rather than formal writing. Additionally, the Unit Notebook helps both you and your students assess how their thinking is progressing, where they’re gaining mastery, and where they might need additional instruction.Click here for the Unit 1 Notebook: Part 1.Click here for the Unit 1 Notebook: Part 2.
ClosersYou’ll find closer activities at the end of all lessons—they’re meant to give students the opportunity to reflect and show their understanding. While we’ve written them to align with the content of each lesson, feel free to swap in exit tickets or other checks for understanding. For more information, check out Openers and Closers Quick Tips.