Over the last 500 years humans have gone from seeing a man in the moon to seeing a man on the moon. This phenomenal advance in collective learning has taken place thanks in large part to a group of strategies which have come to be referred to as The Scientific Method. If humankind has made so much progress by using the Scientific Method, then why not teach all our children to use it at an early age rather than waiting until high school or college to teach a few who are fast-tracked into science and technology careers. If we have made this much progress with a few humans using these strategies, then what will our collective learning curve look like if we are all trained to make science discoveries and/or to appreciate the discoveries of others?

Monday, November 12, 2007

SUN PATH AND MOON PATH INVESTIGATION

Well, it's been a nice three-day weekend. I hope you all enjoyed the beautiful weather on Saturday and Sunday.

We are in the middle of an inquiry investigation about he apparent path of the sun and moon across the sky. I chose November 9 for the day to be studied. That was no accident. November 9 is significant. What phase was the moon in on Nov. 9? More about that later.

First we plotted the path of the sun and moon on a plastic hemisphere with stickers using altitude and azimuth data from the US Naval Observatory for Nov. 8

Second we plotted the path of the sun and moon on a circle graph using data for Nov. 9.

Third, we will ask questions that we are able to answer from our data.

Fourth, we will ask questions that we cannot answer from the data of Nov. 8 or Nov. 9, but that can be answered if we get more data from the US Naval Observatory. Each group will chose a problem that they want to investigate.

Classes are out of sync because I was absent on Monday and there were no classes on Tuesday. 802 missed their double class last Tuesday and will have to catch up with the others.

Therefore, the following lesson plan is not necessarily the lesson for all my classes.

OBJECTIVE: SWBAT Ask and Answer questions about the sun and moon path of Nov. 9

Introduction: Have students share questions and answers

Group Work: Students work in groups of four to make a list of questions that can be answered from the data

Share: Groups share their questions and answers.


OBJECTIVE: SWBAT Ask questions that can be answered by data from the US naval observatory.

Introduction: Elicit a list of questions

Group Work: Students work in groups of four to chose a question and state a hypothesis. Students write a request for the data they need.

Share: Groups share their problems, hypothesis and data requests
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)