Listening to How Your Students Think
I’ve been fortunate to have had several middle and high school teaching experiences, starting in Biddeford, Maine, the town where I spent my first 18 years. Subsequently, I’ve taught in California, Micronesia, and Costa Rica, where I had a wonderful opportunity to loop for two years as a middle school science teacher. Those experiences crystallized into a single principle that I held above all others when I taught for a decade in a Master of Science Teaching (MST) program at Portland State University. Each year, I would tell my graduate students that “your most important skill as a teacher will be to listen to how your students think.”
Working on Into Science Texas
In the last few years, I’ve had another stellar learning opportunity—working with colleagues on the HMH Into Science Texas curriculum. I’ve been especially impressed with several features that are built into the curriculum that provide teachers with a window into student thinking. The three features that stand out for me:
- Assessments are integrated into the activities, helping teachers continuously assess student learning and make course adjustments if needed.
- Assessments are three-dimensional, allowing the teacher to assess students’ understanding of concepts, as well as their ability to use practices and recurring themes and concepts.
- Quizzes and test items are similar to the released STARR items in that they require students to apply thinking skills to explain phenomena and solve problems.
To illustrate these features, I’ve selected a topic that is surprisingly difficult for many students to learn: the cause of the night/day cycle. At first glance, it appears disarmingly simple to teach this concept. All you need to do is explain that our planet spins on its axis once a day. When we are on the side of Earth facing the sun, it is day. When Earth turns so we are facing away from the sun, it’s night. Demonstrate the day/night cycle by turning on a lamp in the classroom (to represent the sun), and have students stand and slowly spin their heads (to represent Earth). Lesson done. Give the quiz and move on. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
Studying Student Responses
Over the past 30 years, several researchers have been interested in the responses that students give when asked to explain the day/night cycle. An especially revealing study (Vosniadou & Skopeliti, 2017) compared students in third and fifth grades who were tested before and after reading a short text. In general, the fifth graders offered explanations that were closer to the scientific conceptions than the third graders, but very few of the students at either level had a strong grasp of the concept. In all, 99 third- and fifth-grade students were involved in the study. Here I’ll focus on 19 of the fifth graders, who were asked to write an explanation with words and drawings of how day/night happens before and after they were given this text to read:
Paul said that the Earth is round and day changes to night because the Earth turns around itself. Sunlight reaches only one side of the Earth, the side that is turned towards the sun. On this side, it is day. On the other side, which is not reached by sunlight, it is night. As the Earth turns around itself, the side that had night now faces towards the sun and it becomes day. On the contrary, the side that had day now faces away from the sun and it becomes night. The moon is not responsible for the day and night cycle. Thus, it changes from day to night because the Earth turns around itself, and the sunlight shines on a different side of Earth.
After reading the paragraph, students were again asked to explain the day/night cycle. The pretests and posttests were coded, and students were assigned to holding either a commonsense “initial” mental model of the day/night cycle typical of the youngest children, a “scientific model” explained in the paragraph they just read, or a “hybrid” model with features of both. Ten of these students were interviewed to gain further insight into their thinking.
Model |
Sample Quote (N = 19) |
Pretest |
Posttest |
Initial |
“When the sun sets or goes behind the mountains (clouds, sea, or other parts of the world), it becomes dark (then moon and stars come out).” |
11% |
|
Hybrid |
“The sun (and the moon) revolve(s) around the Earth.” |
5% |
|
Hybrid |
“Both the Earth and the sun move (and sometimes the moon moves also).” |
5% |
5% |
Hybrid |
“The Earth turns (unspecified).” |
16% |
21% |
Hybrid |
“The Earth revolves around the sun (and moon).” |
11% |
11% |
Hybrid |
“The Earth turns around itself and it is day on the side of the sun and night on the side of the moon (sun and moon are stationary on opposite sides of the Earth).” |
16% |
26% |
Partial Scientific |
“The Earth turns around itself and the side that is lighted by the sun has day when the other has night.” |
36% |
26% |
Scientific |
“The Earth turns around itself and the side that is lighted by the sun has day when the other has night. The moon has no role in the day/night cycle.” |
11% |
One observation from the table is that initial mental models tend to include both the sun and moon, helping to explain night and day. Since the moon is often prominent in the night sky, that is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is that the moon continues to be thought of as a causative factor even after students begin to understand the scientific explanation for the day/night cycle. A second observation is that reading (or being told) the reason for day and night is not a very effective way to teach this concept. For example, after reading the short text, 26% of the students envision that the sun is stationary on one side of the Earth and the moon is stationary on the other. Day and night are caused as Earth turns between them. Another 26% of the students can give the scientific explanation, but they still think the moon is somehow involved in causing day and night.
Earth’s Rotation in Into Science
Lesson 5.9A “Earth’s Rotation,” from the Into Science Texas curriculum, is a series of activities designed to teach about the sun’s daily movement across the sky, the changing pattern of shadows, and the causes of the day/night cycle. Here’s a summary:
What Do You Already Know?
Like all good lessons in astronomy, this lesson begins with students’ observation of the sky from their Earth-based point of view. The teacher shows a video about how the sun moves across the sky and leads a discussion about the causes of the sun’s daily movement and the students’ initial ideas about the cause of the day/night cycle.
Pre-Assessment: The teacher does not try to correct any misconceptions at this stage, but rather listens to the students’ initial thinking.
Engineering It: Shadows Part 1
Students work in teams to research sundials and come up with ideas for how to design and build one. They share their ideas with the rest of the class. The teacher asks for clarifications but does not correct the students’ models, allowing them to make mistakes.
Formative Assessment: The discussion allows the teacher to determine if students are associating changes in shadows with time and the position of the sun.
Engineering It: Shadows Part 2 and 3
Students build and test prototype sundials. They set them in the sun and observe the shadows at least three times, one hour apart. A day or two later, they place their sundials in exactly the same place and observe the results, noting how long it takes for the shadows to appear in the same place (24 hours). The students create a poster explaining how their sundials work.
Formative Assessment: The teacher assesses students’ engineering practices as well as their development of science concepts and use of the RTC cause and effect.
Earth’s Movement
Students engage in a hands-on modeling activity to envision a person on the day side of the Earth and on the night side of the Earth. They use the Cause-and-Effect Science Theme to extend their thinking from the model to real-life situations.
Formative Assessment: Using sentence frames, students write their ideas about a claim (for how Earth’s daily rotation causes night and day), evidence for their claim, and the reasoning that allows them to connect the evidence to their claim.
Exit Ticket: Students make predictions about what a person would experience in 12 or 24 hours.
Reflection
Revisiting the question at the start of the lesson, and reflecting on the activities that they performed, students work in teams to respond to a series of questions about the effects of Earth’s rotation on what we experience on Earth, including the changes in length and positions of shadows during the day, and the alternation of day and night.
Summative Assessment: A quiz allows the teacher to assess 3D learning.
Assessing Student Understanding
The reflection activity at the end of the lesson engages students in bringing together everything they learned throughout the lesson, to help them achieve the main goal to:
TEK 5.9A demonstrate that Earth rotates on its axis once approximately every 24 hours and explain how that causes the day/night cycle and the appearance of the sun moving across the sky, resulting in changes in shadow positions and shapes.
Assessments integrated into the activities help teachers continuously assess student learning and make course adjustments if needed. In the first activity, for example, if several students think the moon is involved in causing the day/night cycle, the teacher may plan an extra day to review a lesson from the fourth grade curriculum on moon phases, or if the moon happens to be visible during the day when the lesson is being taught, to bring them outdoors and illustrate that the location of the moon is not relevant to explaining the day/night cycle.
Assessments are three-dimensional, allowing the teacher to assess not only students’ understanding of concepts, but also their ability to apply practices and recurring themes. In the Engineer It activity, for example, students apply what they are learning about how the daily pattern of the changing length and direction of shadows to the design of a sundial. (RTC 5.5A identify and use patterns to explain scientific phenomena or to design solutions.) Later the students practice their modeling skills to envision how the space-based view of the Earth and sun is related to the Earth-based view of the sun, as Earth slowly spins in space. (SEP 5.1.G develop and use models to represent phenomena.)
Quizzes and test items are similar to the released STARR items in that they require students to apply thinking skills to explain phenomena and solve problems. For example, here are two of the test items from Lesson 5.9A:
1) Kegan did an experiment with a globe and a lamp to see what would happen if Earth’s axis always pointed toward the sun. If Kegan did the experiment correctly, what would he find?
A. Earth would stop rotating to cause night and day.
B. Each pole would be in darkness for about half the year. (correct answer)
C. One pole would always be in darkness, and the other always in the light.
Answering this question requires that students envision a model of the Earth in space—like the physical model that they used in the activity—to predict what a person on the Earth would experience. To answer this question correctly, students need to understand that Earth’s axis continues to point in the same direction as it circles the sun. They also need to demonstrate their skill at developing explanations by use of models (SEP 5.3.A) in a way that was not used in the unit.
2) The movement of Earth causes natural changes we can observe.
Why does Earth have a day-and-night cycle AND what evidence is there to prove it?
Read the question carefully. Then write your answer and evidence on the lines provided.
Students should be prepared to answer this question as a result of the two Claim-Evidence-Reasoning activities in the lesson.
A Final Note on Assessment
Although Lesson 5.9A in the Into Science Texas curriculum is very well-designed and tested, it is important to keep in mind that developing a deep and flexible mental model of Earth in space is a major accomplishment for fifth graders. While it is within the capability of the great majority of middle school students, it is nonetheless a stretch for many to overcome prior misconceptions. So, don’t expect that all students will score 100% on the test, no matter how smoothly the lessons went. What is most important is that students have had a chance to exercise their pattern-finding and modeling skills, and that they have made progress in understanding how a vision of Earth as a spherical planet spinning on its axis each day and circling the sun each year explains the phenomena that we observe every day.
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