Behavior Over Time Graphs

Behavior Over Time Graphs, or BOTGs, are a component of Systems Thinking.  Systems Thinking is the process of understanding how things influence other things within a whole system.  This year in social studies we are going to do a lot with Systems Thinking (as I've previously posted about), so today we started off introducing the basics of Systems Thinking with BOTGs.

We first started off by watching the above screencast about what BOTGs are, and then practiced "reading" and "telling the story" of BOTGs from ones we looked at.  We also went through this presentation to go in-depth further with what BOTGs are and do some more practice or not only making them, but telling the story a BOTG we looked at was telling us.

Students were then unleashed to create their own BOTGs over the National Geographic documentary Six Degrees Could Change the World that we spent time watching and analyzing the different "problems" (or, as the students would discover, things that are changing) that our world would come across with climate change.

For having never done anything with BOTGs before, these students blew me away: they embraced this new form of "graphing" or "reporting" and created many different BOTGs that identified the different changes over time that could/are happening with climate change.

We'll be diving in soon to other components of Systems Thinking, so stay tuned for more posts soon! :)

Systems Thinking

Systems Thinking is something we are going to use a lot in social studies this year.  However, this is something that you'll probably see across the middle school because it it not something that is limited to just one content area.  Systems Thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole.  There are many different tools we use in Systems Thinking, one of my favorites being BOTGs or Behavior Over Time Graphs.  BOTGs focus on patterns of change over time rather than isolated events.  Check out the video below for a quick BOTG tutorial.

In social studies this year we will use BOTGs (& other Systems Thinking tools) a lot.  We will use them to graph changes in our environment, changes in our economy, changes in the way we use to live as opposed to now, and many more things.  BOTGs are a great tool for students to be able to visually and quickly show a change over time without having to worry about long paragraphs or detailed drawings.  Stay tuned for some upcoming projects and assignments with BOTGs involved!  I hope you'll be as impressed and I will be with what these 7th graders come up with!