Education Standards
A Time for Every Season - Grade 8
Overview
Middle school lessons utilize local phenomenon and are organized by grade bands. By designing instruction around local phenomenon, students are provided with a reason to learn shifting the focus from learning about a disconnected topic to figuring out why or how something happens. #Going 3D with GRC
Lesson - Cause of the Seasons
Student Science Performance
Phenomenon: In December it was dark when we came home from basketball practice, but in May we played baseball and it was light until 8:30 pm.
Gather:
Students develop questions to obtain information about the patterns of change in sunset time.
Students obtain information about the causes of change in sunrise and sunset time.
Students obtain information about the causes of seasons, and how the sunlight hours and angle of incidence affect seasonal changes.
Students obtain information by reading native American stories for the patterns in the changes of seasons.
Students use a model to show the relative positions of the Earth and Sun system. https://utah.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/buac18-68-sci-ess-seasonsearthmars/seasons-on-earth-and-mars/
(Teaching Suggestions: Engage students in phenomena - let the daylight savings discussion be in the background and address it in the class discussion. Useful URLs for #2 use the link https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/oklahoma-city?month=11&year=2018 for #3 you may want to use http://d3tt741pwxqwm0.cloudfront.net/WGBH/npls13/npls13_int_seasons/index.html# #4 In this section you will be discussing ways of knowing that include other ways of knowing that comes from observing the environment and describing stories to the cause of the patterns that are observed. http://www.snowwowl.com/legends/abenaki/abenaki5.html; http://www.oneidaindiannation.com/the-legend-of-the-three-sisters/ )
Reason:
6. Students develop and use a model to show the causes of the seasons.
7. Students construct an explanation for how the motion of the Earth around the sun and the tilt of the Earth cause the seasons.
(Teaching Suggestions: The model can be a diagram or physical model but must show the relationship between the changes that cause the seasons. Some student models show a storyboard or series of models that show the progression or changes over time. Focus on the cause of the difference in the amount and intensity of sunlight at a given location in Oregon.)
Class Discussion:
Q: How does your explanation account for the southern hemisphere having summer at the same time we are having winter?
Q: Why do locations near the equator have less seasonal variation than locations further north?
Q: Why are the length of days similar in the fall and the spring?
Q: Why are the longest daylight hours in summer and the shortest in winter?
Q: Why is it warmer in the middle of the day than in the evening?
Q: Why do we have daylight savings time and how does that affect this phenomenon?
(Teaching Suggestions: Focus the students on the relative positions of the Earth and Sun and how the tilt of the earth causes the seasons. Encourage students to write on the board or act out the ideas they use to respond to the questions. Be sure to extend thinking by having multiple students respond to each question and discuss how their model and explanation are consistent or not consistent. Discuss the Daylight savings time as a man-made convention and not an astronomical phenomenon.)
Students revise their explanation for how the motion of the Earth around the sun and the tilt of the Earth cause the seasons.
Communicate Reasoning:
9. Students develop and use a model to support an explanation for the causes of the seasons.
*See attached document below for full lesson.
Additional Lessons can be found at #Going 3D with GRC (Gathering, Reasoning and Communicating). Original authors were: Shirlene Murr-Thompson, Cristin Floch, and Jeffrey Patterson.