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Wow. The moon looks so beautiful tonight. It is 10:20pm and I can see it rising. It is a waning moon and it looks a little red. I can't believe how much I forgot about the moon and its orbit around the earth. It was nice relearning how the phases of the moon changes. I will be better able to explain how the moon phases occur now. I think that all of the visual aides in this SciPack could really help me explain the moon phases. Does anyone know any good resources to show the moon phases in an interactive way?
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Reid,
I posted this before, but the TSI (Teaching Science Inquiry) courses with UH Manoa have an outstanding hands on lesson to show moon phases, eclipses, etc... They even have a whole lesson plan scripted out to take the kids through it. This particular lesson only needs a light bulb suspended in the middle of your room and a styrofoam ball on a pencil. It is very interactive and is one of the best ways I have found to really drive moon phases home to the kids. Here is a link to the site for the classes with CRDG.
http://www.hawaii.edu/crdg/pd/tsi.html
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Here is a link to an article that has several lesson ideas about the moon phases. It is a regular astronomy series article in the NSTA journal for middle schoolers....Science Scope. I think you will find it a great resource.
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Maybe after students understand what causes the different moon phases to occur, you could do a "backwards" activity that would demonstrate how much of that concept they really got. Perhaps you could show them a moon calendar. Hawaiians used them for planting and fishing. Based on the moon calendar, students could identify their observations and then based on their observations create inferences of where they think the sun is in relation to the moon. It would not only emphasize the moon phases but get students to really differentiate between observations and inferences.
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Nancy thanks for the link. Is the lesson plan somewhere on that website? It sounds like a great lesson to do. I can't wait to try it next quarter.
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Betty thanks so much for the article. It had a lot of great information. I also liked that they get to chart the moon phases. I look forward to tying this article into my lesson.
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Denise thanks for the great ideas. I know that it would tie in nicely to our social studies standards which is Hawaiian Studies. It would be great to be able to tie in the two subjects in one lesson. I will start researching on how the ancient Hawaiians used their observations to help them with their daily lives.
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