Big Top Learning Written Narrative

Our unit plan is structured around the young adult, informational novel Big Top Burning by Laura

Woollett (2015). The book discusses the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey circus fire in Hartford,

Connecticut in 1944. It goes into detail about finding the cause of the fire and searching for a missing girl.

However, the book never explicitly states the cause of the fire or if the unidentified remains are, indeed,

Eleanor Cook. Instead, Woollett gives readers opportunities to make their own conclusions from the facts

given. Through the search of identifying the missing girl to what caused the fire, it is clear to see that one

of the book’s main themes is the idea of searching for answers, which also introduces the idea of

ambiguity. Upon further exploration of the theme of searching for answers that was intertwined throughout

the book, we realized that it was also an underlying idea across the content areas as well as in life. This is

important because it gave us a foundation to build our unit plan, Big Top Learning.

Since we knew that we wanted our young adolescent learners to see that searching for answers

was a theme in life as well in the given content areas, we knew we needed to plan and pace our unit to

get them to that point. This type of planning is called backward design. In Un-standardizing Curriculum,

Sleeter and Carmona state that “the clearer a teacher is about what it means to know and what students

do when they know something, the more focused and coherent instruction becomes” (Sleeter & Carmona,

2017). In using backward design, Big Top Learning is much more coherent and focused than it would

have been, which means that the young adolescent learners will understand the objectives and lessons of

this unit better. It also allowed us to integrate English/Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science in a way

that will help the students to be completely immersed in the unit for the overall driving question rather

than learning this in Mathematics but something completely different in English/Language Arts or

Science.

The driving question of Big Top Learning is “How do we search for answers in life?” We thought

that this was important for young adolescent learners to explore because it is inevitably a part of life. The

hope is that this idea would give the students more of a critical lens to view the world. Through viewing

life from a more critical lens, young adolescent learners would begin to see the value of not just accepting

answers given to them, but also understand the value of searching for answers. This brings up the

concept of “exploratory curriculum” that is referenced in the Association for Middle Level Education (2010)
Standard 2 Element c as an integral part of “the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge.” The three goals of

Big Top Learning are being able to understand and communicate how we search for answers in

English/Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science, explain the importance of exploring more than one

way to search for answers, and identify ambiguity in texts and problems.

In English/Language Arts, searching for answers is a common process that readers and writers of

text use. In many situations in ELA, there is not one specific answer, and this brings up the concept of

ambiguity. In many cases, texts are ambiguous, and this unit in ELA will highlight that ambiguity in

informational text. Along with this text study, the ELA portion of this unit also focuses on how our actions

affect others. According to the Association for Middle Level Education (2010) in Standard 1 Element d,

students play a role in “creating and maintaining” a “developmentally responsive learning” experience and

environment. Part of this role includes ensuring that students understand the impacts of their decisions,

which is another central topic that is discussed in ELA. By exploring these concepts through curriculum

integration and the teaching of ELA through a social studies text, students will learn to apply the

information they read in text to their own lives, fulfilling the cognitive strategy of making connections,

which is crucial to understanding. As a result of this study, students will become better readers and

writers of informational text, and most importantly, they will learn to think critically about ambiguous

situations in life and how the things they do impact others as well as their environments.

In mathematics, the nature of the subject requires a constant journey in searching for answers.

Each of the lessons that are presented to the students are presented in an exploratory way. The students

are challenged to use their prior knowledge of mathematical concepts and apply that knowledge as they

explore new concepts. This is representative of AMLE Standard 4 Element b which says, “They use

instructional strategies and technologies in ways that encourage exploration, creativity, and information

literacy skills (e.g., critical thinking, problem solving, evaluation of information gained) so that young

adolescents are actively engaged in their learning (2010).” By providing students with the ability to

explore and derive new concepts from prior knowledge, they are more engaged and more likely to make

the necessary connections in math for it to become meaningful. This search for answers not only teaches

skills that are essential for successful math students, but also for successful people in life.
 With science, it could be argued that searching for answers is essentially what the scientific

process is. When conducting a scientific investigation, it, more often than not, starts with an observation

or concept that piques the scientist’s interest. The scientist will then pose a question and proceed to

investigate it, through many identical trials. After the data is collected and analyzed, the investigation may

or may not be refined. The results are then given to the scientific community. In “Revising Instruction to

Teach Nature of Science”, both Norman and Judith Lederman state that scientific knowledge “is tentative

and subject to change” (Lederman & Lederman, 2004, p. 37). This is important for young adolescent

learners to begin to understand because searching for answers in science and in life is a cyclic process.

Just because we arrive at an answer does not mean that it is the answer for the rest of time. At the end of

Big Top Learning, the young adolescent learners should be able to answer how the ways that we search

for answers in life and science are related and how ambiguity influences the scientific process.

Some of the teaching strategies we plan on incorporating into our unit plan are using high

cognitive demand tasks in mathematics and doing science rather talking about science. This will help

solidify the concept of searching for answers because they will be going through the process of searching

for answers themselves rather than just hearing about it. High cognitive demand tasks are problems that

have multiple pathways to the solution, multiple access points, and a solution is not explicitly apparent

without deep, mathematical thought. They are given tools to help them reach the solution. Essentially, the

young adolescent learners will be engaged in the process of searching for answers. This is because they

are thinking, developing a plan or procedure, and then refining it if need be. In having our young

adolescent learners do science rather than talk about science, they are once again engaging in the cyclic

process. Along with these critical thinking processes in mathematics and science, students will similarly

explore more demanding tasks that reacher higher levels in Bloom’s taxonomy. For example, students will

be required to make connections between multiple types of informational text as well as personal

connections to the text. These higher levels of thinking ensure a curriculum that is “challenging” (AMLE

Standard 2 Element c), which will help to solidify the concept of Big Top Learning for them yet again.

At the end of Big Top Learning, the young adolescent learners will not only be able to answer all

the driving questions and accomplish the goals of the unit, but they will also complete a paper maché

animal project over the course of three days in each of our classes. We will have a box of materials such
toilet paper rolls, paper, and water bottles. The students will be tasked with determining the circus animal

they wish to build and figuring out what materials they need as well as the dimensions of their animal.

They will then build, decorate, and present the animal. In their presentation, they must classify their

animal using binomial nomenclature. The paper maché animal will serve as a visual of the idea of

searching for answers. This is because the students have to figure out what materials they need to build

their animal, build it, decorate, and present it. The “correct” way is not explicitly apparent, and the

students are having to engage in the cyclic process of searching for answers in order to complete the

project.

As a result of the unit, students will, indeed, understand the importance of curriculum integration

(AMLE Standard 1 Element c). They will be able to apply important performance standards from the

Education and Economic Development Act (2005) to their lives. For example, along with determining the

value in integrated curriculum, students will understand the importance of collaboration among peers and

teachers. Students, then, will grow into better readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, and thinkers

who will apply their knowledge gained in the classroom to their experiences far beyond the walls of their

middle school, and that is the goal of not only Big Top Learning but of any learning environment.