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“The Sixth Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert Ch.5 notes and class teaching plan By Grace, Creighton, Beatrice, and Caitlyn

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“The Sixth Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert Ch.5 notes and class teaching plan

By Grace, Creighton, Beatrice, and Caitlin

  • “On The Perception of Incongruity: A Paradigm” – It takes time to understand paradigm shifts, in the chapter the example of the cards are used, the point being that “novelty emerges only with difficulty”
  • what parts of nature are we too ignorant to realize
  • Ordovician period experienced a massive extinction: changed the way the scientific world viewed extinction
  • Past and future are always connected
  • Uniformitarianism vs. Catastrophism
  • Rats will inherit the earth, think about the future and how our histories will be read, how we will leave our stratigraphic signature
  • Possibly a fatalistic perspective of the earth
  • Nemesis as a testament to the difficulty with which humans have to confronting hard truths
  • Anthropocene term: how it came to be, what it implies
    • Pg.108 for examples of humans negative effects on environment1````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
  • Define the period, make sure there is consistency
  • Getting information out of students
  • What are their inputs?
  • Some of the things that we are changing in the environment and how we are restructuring it
  • Take everyone through a timeline
  • How do you teach?
  • Draw the Earth, ask students to draw what they believe they have done to the earth without looking at the bulleted list in the text
  • The amount of food people waste: camp activity that Grace could discuss
  • MAIN POINTS OF THE CHAPTER
  • Getting to the anthropocene that is quietly occurring and the damage we are surreptitiously doing

 

Start with:

Drawing of the earth

How we perceive and interpret extinctions

Explain the Ordovician period, uniformitarianism and catastrophism, how real life appears to be a hybrid of the two

It takes a long time for people to recognize a paradigm shift, it takes a crisis and perhaps a willingness to fully acknowledge the shift

--main point being that the hesitancy to