Guns, Germs, and Steel part 2

I was interested in today's activity; reading and discussing examples of blogs, engaging in the Connect-Extend-Challenge thinking routine, and putting up yet another headline on our Wall of Thought. I'm looking forward to reading the students' posts to their blogs and the comments they make on their classmates'.

The one dimension of the movie, based on Jared Diamond's book of the same name, that I found interesting was his thought, research, and discussion about the domestication of animals and the importance they had in the advancement of civilization. My thinking was extended when he worked his way through the numerous species of animals on earth and determined that there were only 14 successfully domesticated herbivores. 14! And that 4 of them; cow, sheep, pig, and goat, all were found in the Fertile Crescent. Baffling.

To use the vernacular of 6th graders, it's really cool that he had a question that he researched and discovered some cool information and made some really cool conclusions! Good fun!

Well. Once again, I'm off to the store for some domesticated chicken to eat with my domesticated tomatoes and lettuce. Hopefully the bakery will still be open so that I can buy some bread made from, you guessed it, domesticated wheat, butter, oil, and eggs! Wait....does this mean that I am domesticated too?!?!?!?

Happy night, all.

Guns, Germs, and Steel

I love showing this movie in class, or at least the segment I selected, because it affords students with a chance to make connections between their research topics, prior knowledge, and their own lives in Kuala Lumpur. In many ways, Jared Diamond answers the question, how did we get as we are today? Certainly he does so in simplistic terms, but the reasoning and thinking is complex.

I have found that some students soar after watching this video, extending their thinking beyond the norm. Other students use the information as a supplement to what they have already studied. Tomorrow, I will ask the students to complete another Visible Thinking routine, Connect-Extend-Challenge, to check on their understanding and the direction we should go next. They will also write their headlines from the movie onto the class headline that we can put onto our thinking map.

I was happy to watch the interaction on the classroom folder begin as a support folder for a student absent from class that morphed into a discussion and rapid-fire poetry on what desserts and fruits students, and teacher(!), liked. Good fun, really.

I would prefer to say that I'm off to spoon some tiramisu from the refrigerator, but alas I will have to wait until Thursday.

Happy day!