What's With the Moon in the Morning?

Would you be surprised if your middle school student came in one day and said, “I saw the moon this morning! I thought it only came out at night.” The author of this article found that man... See More

Would you be surprised if your middle school student came in one day and said, “I saw the moon this morning! I thought it only came out at night.” The author of this article found that many of his students had never “noticed” the moon during the daytime, and he found that some of his students didn’t know why the moon was visible. If you are about to introduce a unit on the Moon phases, this article will provide some insight into what kinds of questions to ask in order to identify your students’ misconceptions about the Moon and how the phases occur. Then the author will provide several activities that he used to introduce accurate concepts. He engaged his students by having them make direct observations, by using simulations with models, by interacting with video/computer simulations, and by studying traditional diagrams. A sample of a traditional diagram is included (Figure 1).