Week 7

    This lab this week we talked about the planets and saved NDSL strand map for next week. We started off by taking two formative assessments over the moon and stars. We discussed the Private Universe video assignment as a class using the questions: what do students need to learn & what do teachers need to do? My table discussed common misconceptions and we walked around to other groups' whiteboards. 

    The investigation this week was to physically build a scale model of the sun, four inner planets, and the moon. This was a very difficult task to wrap our head around using playdoh and a globe.

Mercury: 3,032

Venus: 3,760

Earth: 3,959

Mars: 2,106

Sun: 432,690  

    Luckily, Alli stopped us after ten or so minutes and provided solar system model calculator. A lot changed after getting the calculator. We made our diagram with a whiteboard drawing of a sun, playdoh and pencil drawings. It was very long! This really opened my eyes to the misconceptions shown on many many many classroom solar system models. Distance and size is not accurately displayed. We ended with a mind boggling video showing stars way larger than our own!

    This week in lecture, we started with a discussion/quiz question over the moon phase last night. People around the world see the same moon type, not different ones. We learned that the moon does rotate but it always faces us with the same side. A small planet hit the Earth and created the moon. We got to see the two different side of the moon. The two look very different from each other.

    The reading this week was Misconceptions Die Hard. The reading reiterated how difficult student misconceptions are to break. This piece was written back in the 80's yet we still face the same problems today. To solve this we need to not teach the way we were taught. The article provides many solutions.

    A comment I have is what are accurate planet activities we can do with our class.