Anyone using Big History Project for middle school and like to give me a review?

[5LittleMonkeys]

Considering this for 7th next year...if I can keep myself from starting it now. :P  It says it's geared for highschool though so wondering if 7th would be too young.  

 

https://www.bighistoryproject.com/home

[Chrysalis Academy]

We are!  It works for 7th grade (I wouldn't do it any younger) although we did modify some of the early writing assignments/Investigations.  She has been learning to write essays this year, so for the first couple of units she wasn't up for a full-on essay.  But she's grown into them and is now writing excellent essays.

 

It's been an absolutely awesome history/science year.  I highly recommend the Big History Project!  Let me know if you have any specific questions.  We have done Origins science alongside big history.  I can share some of the additional resources we've used if you would like.

 

ETA: The teacher materials on the website talk about how to adapt the class to jr. high or to a senior capstone project.  It's designed for 9th grade, but officially adaptable to 7th-12th.

[5LittleMonkeys]

Would love to hear about how you've pulled all your resources together!  

 

I'd also love to hear how you've scheduled this if you don't mind. 

 

 

[Five More Minutes]

Listening in ...

[Chrysalis Academy]

Ok.  Well, I fleshed it out to be a full year of history and a full year of science, so both are supplemented.  In addition to the BH materials on the website, we included:

 

Texts – Science Supplements

The Magic of Reality – Richard Dawkins (12 chapters)

McHenry:  The Elements

Dr. Art’s Guide to Planet Earth (6 chapters)

Dr. Art’s Guide to Science

Evolution – Daniel Loxton

Bones, Brains & DNA – Ian Tattersall

The Third Chimpanzee for Young People – Jared Diamond

The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Young Reader’s edition – Michael Pollan

 

Texts – History Supplements

From Then Till Now – Christopher Moore

A Compact History of Humankind: The History of the World in Big Eras – Meredith Ryley, ed.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Harari

 

Video or Online Courses

Coursera:  Emergence of Life (this is really way over the head of a high school student, you could skip it with no problem)

Open2Study: Human Anthropology

 

Documentaries, Videos, Etc.

HHMI Docos:

The Day the Mesozoic Died

                Evolution: Fossils, Genes, and Mousetraps

                Bones, Stones and Genes: The Origin of Modern Humans

                                Human Evolution and the Nature of Science

                                Genetics of Human Origins and Adaptation

Your Inner Fish

Journey of the Universe

How the Universe Works

Chasing the Elements

Stated Clearly videos – Evolution

Crash Course World History videos

Guns, Germs & Steel

 

Introduction to Ecology

For reference: Ecology & Environment: The Cycles of Life – Sally Morgan

Metacognition:  Eyes Wide Open – Going Behind the Environmental Headlines

Science 101: Ecology – Jennifer Freeman

Crash Course Ecology

HHMI: A Biologist in Gorgonzola

Ferret Ecology Unit – RFWP

[Chrysalis Academy]

As far as scheduling, there are 10 units.  We're in the middle of Unit 8 now.  Here's how it has roughly broken down so far - this is for doing the Big History material itself, not any of the supplements listed in the previous post

 

Unit 1: 12 days

Unit 2: 10 days

Unit 3: 9 days

Unit 4: 10 days

Unit 5: 12 days

Unit 6: 14 days

Unit 7: 12 days

Unit 8: 12 days

Unit 9: 10 days (estimate)

Unit 10: 10 days (estimate)

Little Big History Project: 20 days (estimate)

 

So that's 111 days worth of work from the online material itself, and then another 20 or so days for the final project. So plenty of time for supplementing.  Most days we did something from the website plus a history supplement plus a science supplement - although the science was more skewed to the first half of the year, the history supplementation is heavier from Unit 6 on, once humans enter the scene.  We probably work on this greater Big History project stuff between 1-2 hours per day.  Sometimes more, never less than an hour.

 

Any other questions, do feel free to ask!

[Chrysalis Academy]

I will add that I really, really like the Investigations.  Excellent tool for scaffolding essay-writing.  The student is given a question to answer, and is given an Investigation Library.  Their task is to read and take notes from the given material, and then to write an essay addressing the question.  So it's very scaffolded.  It's been extremely valuable - it takes a lot of time, and a lot of feedback, revision and help, but she has learned so much from writing these essays.

 

I would estimate that we have used about 80-85% of the material provided.  All the videos, most of the articles, all the Investigations.  But not all of the activities.  I chose the ones that were easily adapted to doing one on one, that seemed interesting and relevant, and that weren't already covered by our supplementary material.  I also didn't do the optional PBL projects - they are set up to do as a group, and it wasn't worth it to me to adapt them to a single student.  If you did those, it would add several weeks of additional work.  

[Miss Tick]

Thanks, Rose! I've been wondering how this would work in real-life, and collecting ideas for 7th grade. Serendipity!

[5LittleMonkeys]

Amazing Rose!  Thank you so much for taking the time to type all that up.  I've got many of the science supplements you've mentioned since this was a big area of interest for my oldest dd.  Now to find the time to sit down and research more of these supplements. :)  

 

I'm curious - I know that you had been using WWS with your daughter but that you had dropped it at some point - what did you end up going with?  Dd12 is doing EiW this year for something hands off for me since I'd been focusing on my oldest's depression and eating disorder but she is doing so much better and I'd like to work with dd12 on more solid essay writing. 

[Chrysalis Academy]

We used WWS in 5th, and toyed with using WWS2 in 6th, but decided it wasn't a great fit for a number of reasons, but a main one was that I really wanted to integrate writing into history and literature, and write across the curriculum rather than write about random topics as assigned by the writing program.

 

We did writing across the curriculum in 6th, some book summaries and some reports on historical and/or scientific topics, kind of applying what we learned in WWS1 (chronological narratives, biographical sketches, etc.) and a couple of longer multi-source reports.  This year in 7th, she has been doing Lively Art of Writing, which I think is a really nice intro to essay writing, and then we've been using the Big History Investigations to do thesis-driven essays incorporating multiple sources.  BH makes this so easy, because they provide you with a library of sources, and they give you a question, so it's relatively easy to formulate a thesis, and the student can focus on organizing and writing well, rather than on the research piece.

 

Our next move for writing (LAoW is almost finished) is Writing With a Thesis.  I've been raving about this book recently. We've just done the first chapter so far, but it has sections on all the major types of compositions, but all framed in the context of The Persuasive Principle - that all writing has the purpose of getting your reader to know/believe/do something they didn't before.  So narrations, descriptions, process, compare & contrast, argumentation, etc. are all presented within this context.  This is a nice followup to LAoW and is the way that I want to frame writing from here on out - with audience and purpose clearly in mind, and a thesis/purpose for every paper - so it's a great book for taking the next steps in essay writing.  We'll be completing it this spring and into next year.

 

We are organizing writing the way SWB describes in her high school lectures - writing is split between working through a writing/rhetoric program, and writing across the curriculum.  It's working very well.  I only have Shannon working on one significant writing project at a time, so an essay for history or literature, not both at once.  She does do other writing using study guides for her science or history texts, but only one significant "piece" at a time.So it's not up to the volume SWB suggests for high school, it's one paper a week rather than 2 or 3, but some of them are pretty significant, 1000 word or so, so I'm satisfied with this for a 7th grader.  I've told her the goal for this year and next is to get essay writing so easy/automatic that she can eventually be undaunted by the idea of producing a paper a week in multiple classes, college-level writing, but we have 5 more years to get there, so no rush.

[5LittleMonkeys]

Is this the book? http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Thesis-A-Rhetoric-Reader/dp/1133951430

 

I have Lively Art of Writing that I used with both my oldest dds.  One learned a lot from it...the other could stand to go through it again. :)    Writing across the curricula is something I'm definitely missing for dd12 and am eager to get back to it.  It sounds like Big History will definitely give us that for next year. 

 

Thanks again!  I may have more questions as I dig into this a bit more. 

[Chrysalis Academy]

Yep, that's it. I have the previous edition.

[EndOfOrdinary]

Not to totally derail, but how would you write an essay without a thesis?

 

I have never known any essays to not begin and end with a thesis which must be carried through and supported. I went to classical Catholic school for most of my childhood, so I honestly missed what many people consider "normal."

[kiwik]

You've never finished reading something and wondered what the point was?

[EndOfOrdinary]

Well, yes, many times, but often I do not consider it an essay. I consider it badly written. Since I do not assume Chrysalis Academy's daughter produces bad writing, I was curious what it looked like.

 

I guess to rephrase, why would you begin teaching essay without starting at a thesis?

 

I admittedly know very little about teaching writing. It is my weakest subject by far. This is an honest question because the entire concept seems awkward to me, but might be overwhelmingly brilliant.

[Chrysalis Academy]

No, it's a fair question.  I went through a phase in 5th-6th grade where I was having Shannon write reports.  You know, write a report on Venus, or Impressionism, or a plot summary of a book.  It was a fine exercise for that level, but it was kind of unsatisfying, too - it would end up being a brain-dump of a bunch of information she'd researched.  I knew something was missing but didn't quite get what.  Then I read - this was last summer - Engaging Ideas by John Bean and it made a lightbulb go on - it helped me understand what was missing: her papers weren't starting with a question to answer or a problem to solve.  Now that we've incorporated that into every writing assignment, it's really kicked things up a notch.

 

I realize this might be a no-brainer to many people, and that most of us include having a thesis as part of an essay, but it's actually not as obvious as it seems before you get to the official essay-writing stage.  WWS1, for example, has a kid spend a whole year writing compositions without a thesis in sight.  I can't remember where the thesis is introduced in WWS, but it's certainly not the starting point.  Lots of other writing programs I've seen cover types of writing - narrative, descriptive, expository, etc. but don't really get into developing and using a thesis statement until they introduce persuasive writing - as if that is some different kind of writing that you do only when you are explicitly trying to persuade your reader.

 

That's why I've become such a big fan of Writing With a Thesis, the book we were talking about above.  It bring this concept, that all writing must have a rhetorical purpose, front and center.  So for me, teaching Shannon to write with a thesis for every single piece of (nonfiction) writing, has led to epiphanies for both of us.

 

Coming up with a thesis can be hard for a kid, though, especially when they are reading a bunch of primary sources and figuring out what's important, how to organize it, etc.  So that's what I've liked about the Big History Investigations - they start with a problem to solve or a question to answer, and in answering it, you are formulating a thesis.  It keeps you from falling into the trap of just summarizing and regurgitating the information.  It's also an application of SWB's Prime Directive for teaching writing: don't ask the student to do two hard new things at the same time.  Having a question leads easily into formulating a thesis, so the focus can be on organizing the supporting points and writing well, not formulating an opinion from scratch.  

 

So it's not that you would begin teaching essay writing without starting with a thesis, but many programs do teach middle grade students other types of writing - not strictly essays - without a thesis.   And that can lead to some kind of inane writing from kids at this stage, where you are thinking, ok, this is technically fine, but what's the point?

 

I hope that made sense - I just took my first sip of coffee.  It's always dangerous for me to post before the caffeine has fully kicked in!  ;)

[Chrysalis Academy]

You've never finished reading something and wondered what the point was?

 

All the time . . .  :lol:

[EndOfOrdinary]

That made total sense.  I get you completely.  To some degree I think that way of going about it might be easier.  Organize and write about concrete thoughts.

 

Nuns had me start the other way.  From the time we were in Kindergarten we were coming up with a thesis.  Just a thesis.  So you had to have a thesis about a Bible recitation.  You were asked to give a thesis about math or a short story.  All they wanted was an opinion and three reasons why.  It could be about just about anything and usually they were terrible.  The called it a 5 minute thesis.  We had to do it a lot or so it seemed.  I was little however, so it might have only been once a week.  I once got into trouble for a thesis which went something like, "I think Bible recitation is annoying because I do not like the book of Matthew, I am not very good at remembering his words, and Jesus will love me anyway."  It was an acceptable thesis, but they weren't really enjoying my point of view.

[Chrysalis Academy]

That made total sense.  I get you completely.  To some degree I think that way of going about it might be easier.  Organize and write about concrete thoughts.

 

Nuns had me start the other way.  From the time we were in Kindergarten we were coming up with a thesis.  Just a thesis.  So you had to have a thesis about a Bible recitation.  You were asked to give a thesis about math or a short story.  All they wanted was an opinion and three reasons why.  It could be about just about anything and usually they were terrible.  The called it a 5 minute thesis.  We had to do it a lot or so it seemed.  I was little however, so it might have only been once a week.  I once got into trouble for a thesis which went something like, "I think Bible recitation is annoying because I do not like the book of Matthew, I am not very good at remembering his words, and Jesus will love me anyway."  It was an acceptable thesis, but they weren't really enjoying my point of view.

 

:lol: Love the thesis!

 

I think that is a brilliant approach, actually, and it still follows the Prime Directive of not doing two new hard things at once.  By having you come up with the thesis and supporting points, but not making you write a full essay, you were practicing the thinking part.  And practicing and practicing.  By the time it was time to actually write an essay, I bet it felt pretty natural and straightforward and you could concentrate on getting it down on paper in a coherent fashion.  The thinking is actually the hard part, so by having you focus on that and practice the heck out of it, the nuns were nicely preparing you for essay writing.  I think we tend to do it backwards too often - we focus on getting kids to get words down on paper without teaching them the clear thinking that needs to happen first.  

 

After 7 months spent hammering on essays and developing a good thesis before you start writing, Shannon and I were discussing her next essay, and she said, "This essay writing thing isn't so bad."  Because she gets it now!  This was such a great moment, because now the form is coming naturally, so she can think more about the ideas.

 

Ok, I have to do it again, I'm going to post my favorite William Zinsser quote, because it's so relevant in this context.  I make Shannon re-read it before every revision session.

 

Think! Ask yourself, "What do I want to say?" Then try to say it.  Then ask yourself, "Have I said it?" Put yourself in the reader's mind: Is your sentence absolutely clear to someone who knows nothing about the subject? If not, think about how to make it clear.  Then rewrite it.  Then think: "What do I need to say next? Will it lead logically out of what I've just written? Will it also lead logically toward where I want to go?" If it will, write the sentence.  Then ask yourself, "Did it do the job I wanted it to do, with no ambiguity?" If it did, think: "Now what does the reader need to know?" Keep thinking and writing and rewriting.   If you force yourself to think clearly you will write clearly. It's as simple as that.  The hard part isn't the writing: the hard part is the thinking.

[texasmama]

Subbing because I just bought Writing with a Thesis. :)

[Chrysalis Academy]

I just found another great resource for a middle grader - the Peter Akroyd DK Voyages Through Time Volume titled The Beginning.  It would be an awesome supplement to the first 7 Units.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Ackroyd-Voyages-Through-Time/dp/1405306920/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1425150458&sr=8-2&keywords=the+beginning+peter+ackroyd

[SparklyUnicorn]

Links?  I have not heard of this.

 

 

[Chrysalis Academy]

Link to online portal:

 

https://www.bighistoryproject.com/home

[Lakeside]

Did you register as a teacher?

[Chrysalis Academy]

Yes.  You really want to do that to access all the educational resources.  The stuff on the non-teachers website is interesting, but only a small fraction of what becomes available if you register as a teacher.  That's definitely the route to go if you plan to use this as a spine for history.

[Lakeside]

Yes. You really want to do that to access all the educational resources. The stuff on the non-teachers website is interesting, but only a small fraction of what becomes available if you register as a teacher. That's definitely the route to go if you plan to use this as a spine for history.

Thanks! The school name requirement made me pause, but it didn't look like the public version was very in depth.

[Chrysalis Academy]

I had no trouble registering as a teacher. I just used our school name, Chrysalis Academy. They are happy to have homeschoolers participate!

[momto2Cs]

My ds is very much looking forward to this. As he'll be in 9th grade, I am fleshing it out with additional resources so it will count as full credit for history and (non-lab) science. And I swear I saw something recently that said they've added some content to make it a full credit course for California social studies, but of course I can't find anything on that now. :glare:

 

And I have to say that Rose (Chrysalis Academy) has been amazingly helpful in recommendations, etc.!!

[MEmama]

My ds is very much looking forward to this. As he'll be in 9th grade, I am fleshing it out with additional resources so it will count as full credit for history and (non-lab) science. And I swear I saw something recently that said they've added some content to make it a full credit course for California social studies, but of course I can't find anything on that now. :glare:

 

And I have to say that Rose (Chrysalis Academy) has been amazingly helpful in recommendations, etc.!!

I'm keeping this in mind as a possibility for 8th but more likely 9th, since we'll be studying Modern History in 8th and I'm concerned that would be overkill for one year. Since 9th means counting for transcripts (gulp), how do you know how many credit hours each you'd need each for history and science? I think I'm trying to talk myself into doing it for 8th for simplicity, but mostly because I don't yet understand transcript requirements.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Lots of discussions on the High School Board about counting credit hours, but in general, a min of 120 hours = 1 credit.   You can easily get 120 hours from the Big History material that is provided - if you do the papers and such.  We easily added an additional 120 hours. I would have zero qualms about awarding one history credit and one non-lab science credit for what we did this year.

[MEmama]

Lots of discussions on the High School Board about counting credit hours, but in general, a min of 120 hours = 1 credit. You can easily get 120 hours from the Big History material that is provided - if you do the papers and such. We easily added an additional 120 hours. I would have zero qualms about awarding one history credit and one non-lab science credit for what we did this year.

Thank you! :)

[kwg]

Interested for my 8th grader next year. 

[tmstranger]

I learn so much on these boards! This was a great discussion of writing...and history!

[Mom-ninja.]

We are!  It works for 7th grade (I wouldn't do it any younger) although we did modify some of the early writing assignments/Investigations.  She has been learning to write essays this year, so for the first couple of units she wasn't up for a full-on essay.  But she's grown into them and is now writing excellent essays.

 

It's been an absolutely awesome history/science year.  I highly recommend the Big History Project!  Let me know if you have any specific questions.  We have done Origins science alongside big history.  I can share some of the additional resources we've used if you would like.

 

ETA: The teacher materials on the website talk about how to adapt the class to jr. high or to a senior capstone project.  It's designed for 9th grade, but officially adaptable to 7th-12th.

 

 

Just saw this in your sig. Thanks so much for putting it there. 

[dachapman]

ETA: The teacher materials on the website talk about how to adapt the class to jr. high or to a senior capstone project.  It's designed for 9th grade, but officially adaptable to 7th-12th.

 

Can anyone please direct me to where the teacher materials are that discuss how to adapt the class to jr. high?  I'm very interested in this!

 

I'm also interested in viewing two of the Customer Created Deployments for Big History Project:

• Middle School (simplified or extended version of Big History for younger students)
• Science Integrated (year long course combining history and science)

If you have any info on these, can you please send me links to access lesson plans for those versions of the class?

 

I'm using this class for a class I teach to a group of homeschoolers - middle and high schoolers combined.  I'm hoping it will make sense to do this!  Any suggestions?

[Chrysalis Academy]

Where did you find the Customer Created Deployments? I'm not seeing that. And I want to!  Can you share a link?

 

If you go to bighistoryproject.com/home, then you want to click on the tab that says "Students, Teachers" on the right side of the page.  This takes you to a page with a button that says "Teachers Register"  Once you do that, you have access to all the course materials.  One quick way to see all the teacher resources - including the course overview with details on how to adapt the course to middle school - is to click on the "Teacher Resources" button on the "Console" tab.  There you will see links to course resources, planning guides, etc.  

 

The main adaptation I made for a 7th grader was the writing assignments.  The Investigations are excellent, but very challenging for kids who aren't already competent essay writers. We used the early Investigations to help learn how to write essays, alongside Lively Art of Writing which she was doing for composition.  So the first few times, lots of handholding as I walked her through the process step by step.  By the end, she was able to produce the essays with less help from me, but I was still very involved in discussing the ideas, helping her articulate her thesis, etc.  

 

We also chose not to do the PBL activities, since it was just one student, and we had a lot of added science material we were covering.  For a class/co-op, I think the PBLs would be very cool.  

 

Let me know if I can answer any specific questions.  Have fun with it! We had an awesome year.

 

ETA: Here's another resource describing the project, if you don't want to register to find out more about how teaching it might work:

 

http://cdno.gettingsmart.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/GettingSmartonBigHistoryFINAL.pdf

[dachapman]

Where did you find the Customer Created Deployments? I'm not seeing that. And I want to!  Can you share a link?

Thanks for your helpful response! 

 

I don't know where to find the Customer Created Deployments.  I was hoping someone else had found them!  I'll keep you posted if I find them.

 

Thanks again - looking forward to this curriculum for the fall!

[dachapman]

Thanks for your helpful response! 

 

I don't know where to find the Customer Created Deployments.  I was hoping someone else had found them!  I'll keep you posted if I find them.

 

Thanks again - looking forward to this curriculum for the fall!

 

Here's a response I received from a BHP representative.  Following the quote is a lesson plan for a two year scienced focused implementation of BHP, courtesy of Amy Hiebel - a teacher.

 

"We need to remove reference to those docs.

 

Middle school teachers that were teaching the course over two years generally found that the pace was too slow for their kids. All of the larger deployments moved back to a single year deployment, and adjusted the reading lists. We can reach out to some of these places to start a conversation if that would be helpful.

 

On the science front, we are about to start work on a more robust plan for science. We plan on starting this work in a month or so. There are a couple of schools that more deeply integrate science, but much of the science work is teacher generated. One of these is a two year middle school deployment. "

Hiebel 2013-15 Frank.pdf

Hiebel 2013-15 Frank.pdf

[Chrysalis Academy]

Thanks for sharing. It's not too different from what I ended up doing - running correlated science units on the side during "science time"  I agree that spreading it over 2 years would be too slow, we had no trouble finishing it in one year.