Science in the New Zealand Curriculum
Achievement objectives
Level 3: Making Sense of the Nature of Science and Its Relationship to Technology
Students can recognise when simple investigations can be classified as a "fair test" and make decisions about the worth of results.
Science in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 30
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/science/curriculum/p30_31_e.php
Levels 3 and 4: Developing Scientific Skills and Attitudes
Processing and interpreting: Students can identify trends and relationships in recorded observations and measurements by making links within organised data.
Science in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 46
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/science/curriculum/p44_51_e.php
Level 3: Making Sense of Planet Earth and Beyond
Students can locate and use information obtained from space exploration to clarify, challenge, and extend their ideas about the general nature and behaviour of the Earth, its moon, and the other planets in our solar system.
Science in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 112
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/science/curriculum/p112_113_e.php
The teacher's intended outcomes were for the students to:
- explain the causes of day and night and the seasons, using models and evidence
- clarify their scientific ideas.
The intended outcomes were aligned to the following "big ideas":
- Day and night are caused by the rotation of Earth on its axis.
- The seasons are caused by the Earth's orbit of the Sun.
- Scientists use evidence to justify their theories to others.
The teachers at this school wanted to teach the students about day and night, the seasons, and the phases of the Moon. They began the unit with a written diagnostic activity. (Some students also had an interview, using models to explain their answers.) The students' responses indicated that the inclusion of the phases of the Moon in the unit was too much and that they needed to explore:
- the relationship between light and shadows
- models and perspectives of Earth
- scale (distances and sizes).
The teachers decided to use an "investigating with models" approach. Part of this approach was for the students to use Starry Night, an astronomy planetarium programme, to collect and record data that they could use to support or refute their explanations. They also worked with globes and models of the Earth, Sun, and Moon in small groups. The investigating with models approach was time-consuming, but it helped the students to understand these difficult concepts.
Teacher-student conversation
Diagnosing Megan's needs:
| Teacher: |
Tell me why, in this drawing ["before" view], it's daytime for the top half and night-time for the lower half. |
| Megan: |
Because the top half has the opposite to the lower half. When my family phones England, it's always the opposite time to New Zealand. |
| Teacher: |
So, if you choose two cities in the same longitude on the globe, one in the northern hemisphere [Megan chooses Tokyo] and one in the southern hemisphere [Adelaide], what would you predict about the daytime or night-time in these cities? |
| Megan: |
If Adelaide has daytime, then Tokyo would be night. |
| Teacher: |
How might you test your prediction? |
| Megan: |
I can use Starry Night to see what time of day it is in those cities. |
The time clock and shadows on Starry Night showed that it was the same time in both cities. Megan repeated the test with another pair of cities on the same longitude, helping her to understand that it is the rotation of the Earth that causes day and night and that this supports an east-to-west rather than a north-to-south sunrise to sunset. Her learning was reinforced by an interview with the teacher, in which she used models to explain her ideas (see the video clips).
To move Megan towards the next learning step, the teacher could help her to focus on:
- using the models to explore why the Sun rises at different times in different places and using her body to model the words "orbit" and "rotation" (thinking in scientific ways)
- finding ways to share her explanations with another group of students who haven't studied the causes of day and night and the seasons (developing and communicating scientific understanding).
The teacher could:
- ask Megan to read a book on a recent discovery and discuss how the scientific community depends on the work of other scientists to make advances in scientific understanding
- encourage Megan to use other aids, such as analogies or role plays, to explain a scientific concept.
References
Ministry of Education (1993). Science in the New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media.
Starry Night CD-ROM. Space Holdings Corp: New York. Available from www.starrynight.com
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