Misconceptions on Seasonal

Change

Fourth Grade Lesson

Kathryn McBride



Learning Goal - Students can
demonstrate and explain why we have
changing seasons

Misconceptions surrounding this topic:

The seasons are caused by earths varying
distance from the sun.
The earth spins faster in the winter and
slower in the summer which allows for more
time and heat in the summer.

(These were discovered in preassessment given to my students.)
Formative Assessment #1 and #3
Students were asked to respond to the
following prompt in their science
journals:
Your friend tells you the reason our winter is
so cold is because we are further from the sun
than we are in the summer. Do you agree or
disagree? Explain.
This task revealed an array of misconceptions and
helped guide further instruction.
Formative Assessment #2
After discussion and inquiry about seasonal change
with sphere and lamp, each student should be able
to accurately demonstrate the seasons in Illinois
individually. Students are assessed in the following
ways:
Demonstrates appropriate tilt with Styrofoam sphere and
keeps axis pointed in same direction throughout revolution
around lamp
Can identify seasons correctly
Moves CCW around lamp and keeps sphere equidistant
from lamp
Can explain why the position the earth is in represents its
corresponding season
Can explain the seasons of the southern hemisphere
How to Disprove Misconceptions
through Modeling
Materials:
Styrofoam sphere with skewer to
represent axis, pin to represent Illinois,
and line drawn in middle for equator
Lamp without shade
Globe
Using students prior misconceptions, I
asked them to model how they would
show a revolution around the sun
Initial Results
Students held sphere so axis was
straight up and down
Moved further away from the light in
winter, very close in summer, and
moderate distance for spring and fall
Seeing this demonstration, some students
who initially believed that the earth stayed
the same distance from the sun were now
convinced otherwise.
What next?
Address climates elsewhere in the world
Students were asked to ponder if all locations in
the world experience the same weather at the
same time
Most knew the equator is always hot and the poles are
always cold
Next, I pointed to the southern hemisphere of the earth
and asked about locations there.
Misconceptions were so ingrained that students wanted
to believe the weather was the same elsewhere until I
asked them to prove it.
Used the globe to find location that was close to as far
south from the equator as were are north in Chicago.
Utilized the internet to look up climate/seasons in southern
Argentina
New Discoveries
In southern Argentina, winter occurs in
June, July and August and summer
occurs in December, January and
February.
This disproved two initially held beliefs:
Earths orbit moves further away from the
sun in our winter and closer again in the
summer
The earths axis points straight up and
down
Model Again with New
Understanding
Student modeled tilt correctly, but pointed tilt
towards the sun for the entire revolution
meaning the northern hemisphere would
always experience summer.
Another student posed this problem, was called
up to model and did so correctly.
We discussed at each quarter rotation if the
model aligned with what we had recently
discovered. All students agreed it did.
All but two students could model this correctly
without assistance for the second assessment.
Final Assessment
Students repeated journal response with a
word bank and an orbit path to draw the
revolution (see next slide)
While all students correctly disagreed with
the prompt, that earths distance from the
sun does not change, nearly half did not
draw the seasons correctly on the orbit path.
When it was clear the northern hemisphere was
positioned in summer, it was labeled fall or spring,
along with other errors.
Does this indicate a gap in understanding if it
can be explained in writing, modeled
independently, but not drawn accurately?
Student Drawings
<--- correctly drawn












seasons
misplaced--->
Reflection
Will utilize this approach in the future
Formative assessments helped:
reveal numerous misconceptions
inform which direction to take my teaching
indicate where more instruction was necessary
make growth in understanding apparent
Adaptations for the future:
provide materials to make model to all students and have
them work to create an accurate representation of earth
spend more time on drawing orbit