Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

15 minutes – Tune in: Comprehending scale
15 minutes – Find out: Thresholds - Understanding timelines of the development of the universe
25 minutes – Take action: Visualising 13.82 billion years
5 minutes – Reflection

Presentation Slides

We strongly encourage you to use the Presentation Slides as a guide for yourself and your students through this lesson.

Tune in: Comprehending scale

You can also use the Presentation Slides to guide you through these steps.

Step 1.

Watch:

Universe Size Comparison | Cosmic Eye (Original HD) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Are9dDbW24)

Note: It might be worth explaining to students that the scale at the bottom of the video is showing you how long 1cm, 1m, 1km etc. are compared to the image currently being displayed. As the image zooms out, those lengths diminish, as they are representing less and less of the picture, until they eventually switch over to a larger scale of measurement.

You might want to slow the video down to playback at 0.5x the speed so that you can really comprehend it.

This is a good opportunity to revise the base 10 value of our metric system:

How many centimetres are in a metre? How many metres in a kilometre?

See how high you can go!

Step 2.

Check-in on how this video made students feel.

It could make them feel a little overwhelmed or insignificant. That's okay. Reassure them that the universe is big, but not scary, and that they might be small, but they have a big, big role to play in the future of the planet and the human race.

Step 3.

Instruct students to turn to their partner and describe where they live. Give each student 60 seconds.

Step 4.

Watch:

My Place In Space - Read aloud by illustrator Roland Harvey (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoU7SHm4xx8)

Note: It is recommended that you grab this book from your school's library and read it to your class yourself. This video is just a backup.

Alternatively, you could consider using Your Place in the Universe by Jason Chin.

Step 5.

Ask some students to describe how their perception of where they live and their place in the universe has changed after reading this book.

Emphasise to students that our universe is more complex than we often think about in our daily lives.

Step 6.

Independently, on a piece of lined paper, students describe where they live. Use the last few pages of My Place In Space as inspiration.

Find out: Thresholds - understanding timelines of the development of the universe

Step 1.

Ask students to come up with a definition for 'threshold'.

A threshold is what you step across when you enter a room. A threshold takes you from one place into another. When you're about to start something new, you're at a new threshold.

Step 2.

In small groups, using a blank piece of white paper, students create a mind map centred around the word 'car'.

Branching off from the main circle in the middle of the page, they might have smaller subcategories, such as 'engine'.

Can students list all the parts that come together to make a car? Probably not! There's a lot.

You might come together after two minutes to combine your answers on a class mind map on the board.

Step 3.

Explain to students that even though a car is one 'thing', there are many small things that come together to form the whole.

This is what happened in the creation of our universe. Lots of things came together to form a new, complex thing, which combined with even more things to form an even more complex thing.

Big History calls these thresholds. Our universe crossed a lot of important thresholds to become what it is today.

Conditions had to be just right for this to happen. Scientists call these conditions Goldilocks Conditions, because, just like the porridge, the chair, and the bed in the Three Bears’ house, they had to be just right for Goldilocks.

Step 4.

Watch:

Introduction to Thresholds of Increasing Complexity | Big History Project (Public Embed) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CgsDk8zeIs)

Step 5.

Briefly discuss the thresholds students noticed that were mentioned in this video. You can use the Threshold Labels as helpful reminders.

Take action: Visualising 13.82 billion years

These instructions are going to refer to a piece of string or rope 14m long. Lay it out in an open space outside.

However, you could just as easily use a chalk line (14m) drawn on a basketball court, or cones, to represent the timeline of the history of the universe.

Before starting you'll also have to cut up the threshold titles for rope activity cards.

Step 1.

Head outside where you'll have some space to conduct this task.

Step 2.

Show students the piece of rope. Explain to students that this is a representation of the timeframe of the known universe, from the time when there was nothing, to the now, this very second.

Step 3.

Explain that each metre of this rope represents 1 billion years. Woah!

Step 4.

Give one student the title card for Threshold 1. Ask them where on the timeline they think this event (commonly known as The Big Bang) occurred.

Step 5.

Since this is the event that started everything, it happens right at the very start of our rope. Ask the student to stand at that spot with their Threshold Card.

Step 6.

Repeat the above steps with each of the other Threshold Cards, asking "When do you think our solar system was formed” (Threshold 4)" all the way up to "When do you think humans started farming?” (Threshold 7).

The actual times are listed below for your convenience. You might like to make some sort of mark or wind some duct tape around the rope as a reminder for yourself.

Remember accuracy is not needed for students to grasp the immensity of the timeline, (unless you have gifted maths student/s in your class who wish to solve the problem accurately for you!)

Threshold 1: At the start of the rope
Threshold 2: 20cm from the start of the rope
Threshold 3: 90cm from the start of the rope
Threshold 4: 4.5m from the end of the rope
Threshold 5: 3.8m from the end of the rope
Threshold 6: 0.0002m - virtually at the end of the rope
Thresholds 7 and 8: at the end of the rope. Explain to students the rope would need to be much longer to be able to show the difference in time! Our scale is too big to effectively visualise these thresholds.
Place Threshold 9: The Future card just beyond the end of the rope

Reflection

Ask students to make one comment about the scale of the universe. Prompt their thinking by asking:

What was most interesting about this experiment? Or, what was something new that you discovered that you didn't know before?
Were you surprised about how much history has already happened?
Was it hard to comprehend how much time that was? Did the visualisation help you to understand?
Were you surprised where the thresholds occurred throughout time? Were you surprised that many occurred together, in very recent history?

Ask students to focus on something new or interesting that they discovered today. In the Pre-Assessment Reflection Page, ask students to write down one sentence about what they learned today that they might tell their parents after school.

For example: The universe is much, much older than I ever imagined.

Watch just for fun:

Zoom by Istvan Banyai (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMhUujrN4iU)

Where to next?

Students' learning throughout Big History is leading them towards designing future cities. As Big Historians, we are travelling through 13.82 billion years of our universe’s history to find solutions to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal #11: to make cities inclusive, safe and resilient.

Remind students that the Sustainable Development Goals are the world’s to-do list for people and the planet. We all need to be a part of the process. 193 nations came together and agreed on one common list for all of us that helps make the planet and our communities stronger.

What will be our first touchdown threshold in our next lesson? The Big Bang: How do we understand where everything in our universe began?

Big History Passport check-in

After this lesson, students should have added to their Big History Passport:

A description of students' address
Pre-Assessment Threshold Reflection Page.

Big History - Just How Big and Old is the Universe?

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