Open the unit with a fact that breaks scale

Interesting gets a nod; awe gets attention you can build a unit on. Awe needs two things: genuine vastness, something bigger, older or stranger than the student's current frame, and a frame that cannot absorb it, which is what drives the urge to explain. Keltner & Haidt (2003) called this the need for accommodation. Familiarity is the enemy: after ten years of teaching a topic you can no longer see what is astonishing about it, but your students still can, once. Spend that once deliberately. (Manning's awe-wonder-experience-designer skill builds unit openings around exactly this.)

In practice

I teach [subject] to [age group]. Next unit: [topic].
I have taught it so often I can no longer see what is
astonishing about it.
List 5 facts or images from this topic that are
genuinely vast: scale, time, complexity or consequence.
For each, give:
1. The fact, stated plainly in one sentence.
2. Why it breaks a typical student's current frame.
3. The question it should leave hanging, which the
   rest of my unit will answer.
No clickbait phrasing. Verifiable facts only.

• Find the fact that breaks scale: the number of synapses, the age of the rock, the size of the number. Every subject has one.
• State it plainly and stop. No fanfare, no video montage. Silence after a genuinely vast fact does more work than commentary.
• Immediately hang the unit's driving question on it, so the wonder becomes inquiry rather than a moment of entertainment.
• Do not follow the moment with a worksheet of definitions. The next task must let students chase the question the fact raised.