Introducing Universal Theme of Change
Objective
Students will categorize examples of "change", create a big idea about change, and then support that big idea with new examples.
The goal with this task is for students to think both deductively and inductively, moving from examples to a big idea and also from a big idea to examples. They will be working at several different levels of abstraction and thinking about your Universal Theme in new ways.
Steps
- Students simply brainstorm as many examples of the theme as they can think of onto a circle map. Encourage dozens of ideas. This is best done with a large group.
- Next, individually or in small groups, students start to group those examples into 3 - 5 categories.
- Now, students move their categories into a new graphic organizer and label the categories with 1 - 3 word labels.
- Then, they create a big idea statement about the universal theme using at least some of their labels.
- Finally, students can look for examples across different areas or subjects that support this new big idea they created.