Reflection: Mystery of the Three Scary Numbers (Rethinking Schools)

Fascinating article by Bill Bigelow from Rethinking Schools about a group activity in a Portland high school classroom to examine climate change statistics.  Although the teachers provided questions for the students to answer from the clues (data) they were given, students came up with their own questions in the process, and the discussion afterwards was about how to "...raise the question of what we should do - not answer it."   Also, for homework they gave students an abbreviated version of article at a difficult reading level (Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone), but they felt the students gained background knowledge from the activity to help make the reading more accessible.  Highly recommended! 

This is also a connection for me to the ALS Writing 87/97 curriculum project where we'll use Reading Apprenticeship with more challenging or provocative readings/data as prompts for student writing.

And I just read the article about Japanese Lesson Study that Alouise has linked on the top of our Moodle page, and I realize that someone like Bill Bigelow has spent so much time thinking about how to deliver curriculum (with or without colleagues as in the Lesson Study framework) that he is able to create (and put lots of time into) a thoughtful and active lesson that engages students and gets the points across without being teacher-directed.  Wow.