OpenSciEd Unit 8.4 · Lesson 03 · 3.B
Look for: Changes in the amount of daylight and angle o…
From Teacher Edition
Facilitation guidance from the lesson plan — what to notice in student thinking and how to respond while teaching.
Building towards
3.B Collect and produce data showing patterns of changes in daylight and the angle of elevation of the Sun in the sky to serve as evidence to evaluate the accuracy of the Earth–Sun system model.
What to look / listen for
Students should identify that their models do not reflect the data they have collected. Look for the following:
Changes in the amount of daylight and angle of elevation of the Sun in the sky occur in a regular, repetitive, and cyclical pattern.
What to do
If students do not call out that the data they collected from the video and NOAA websites does not match the data they collected from measuring the physical models, have students refer back to Observations of the Sun: Location ____________, Sun Patterns Over Many Hundreds of Years, and their science notebook. Point out that the changes in daylight and the angle of elevation of the Sun in the sky are not reflected in the measurements we recorded using the physical models.
Say, It sounds like we have some results that suggest our models might need to be revised in order to account for the patterns we think we should see year after year. Let’s plan to work on revising our models to better explain the patterns from our NOAA data tomorrow.