The students will come in and I will start the class by having them do a ticket into class. They would need to each tell me one thing that they learned from the article, with no repeated answers. I would then ask them why I had them read the article. I would give my interest in the article, as well as the fact that we were exploring how life might look on another planet. Then using a compare and contrast chart on the board, I would have them, compare and contrast conditions on Titan, and Epsilon Eridani b using quotes from the article and what they know about Earth.
Then I would have them re-read the article in this fashion: someone would read a section, and then we would stop and discuss. During the discussion I would ask them questions about the section that they just read to point out important information and to prompt deeper thought. Examples: Why is the wobble important? Why is life unlikely to be found on Titan? How did they discover that Epsilon Eridani had a planet? Why is now such a crucial time to be looking at EE? What would it mean if there was life there? How would we know if there was life there? So on and so forth with each section. Starting halfway through the article, I would have them pose questions to the class, both questions that they know the answers to and ones that they don’t know the answers to. I would step in for questions that no one knew, or if none of us knew it, assign it for extra credit. This way they would be asking questions of the text and thinking about it that way.
Although they had read it the night before for homework, it was more to familiarize them with the material than anything else, so that they would have some background knowledge of the article before they came to class, since it could be a challenging article for some of them.
