Diagram showing the Earth revolving around the Sun. Image is public domain.

Why does the Earth have seasons? This, along with other phenomena associated with Earth’s movement in space, is regularly taught throughout primary school and high school. In New South Wales, Australia, students learn the seasons from Year 3/4 through to Year 7/8.  By the time students reach high school (Year 7/8), they know that it is the Earth’s tilt and its revolution around the Sun are associated with the seasons. However, many students don’t know why or they hold the misconception that the Earth’s tilt causes the Southern Hemisphere to be a little bit closer to the Sun during some times of the year and this little bit of extra closeness to the Sun causes it to be warmer, so hence summer, and vice versa for winter. In reality, the Earth being tilted while it is revolving around the Sun results in variations of solar intensity due to varying angles of incidence. This is a very difficult concept for students to grasp. I have found the following collection of activities useful in guiding Year 7/8 students to understand the real reasons for the seasons.

Identify the misconceptions

Ask students to explain why the Earth has seasons. The majority of students will be able to say something about the Earth’s tilt and its revolution around the Sun. Many will stop there. Some will go on with the misconception about the slight changes in the distance between the hemispheres and the Sun causing the seasons.

Investigation – Angle of insolation and heat distribution

Students to work in groups in an investigation like this one to explore how the angle of insolation affects heat distribution, which in turn results in variations of temperatures and daylight hours as the Earth revolves around the Sun. I find that many students experience difficulty with this activity. Not only is the concept of seasons caused by angle of insolation challenging enough, but the activity itself is challenging as it uses challenging numeracy concepts.

Video

I find this video from Crash Course kids effective in reinforcing the concepts discovered in the investigation.

How do you teach reasons for the seasons? Do you also find that students in Year 7/8 have difficulty understanding it conceptually? What hands-on activities do you do with your students?

How can we make Mars the perfect planet for the perfect society?

This is the project my Year 7s will work on in Term 2. The project will be a cross-curricular project involving English, Science, Geography and History. In English, students will be reading the novel, The Giver, to explore a “perfect” society. In Science, they will be learning about space and space travel. In Geography, they will be learning about what makes a society (laws, types of government, etc) and in History, they will be learning about Ancient Rome as a society. Students will produce a range of learning artefacts for this project, including building their own “perfect” society in Minecraft.

Here’s their project outline. Keep in mind I had to frame this project with restrictions of existing assessments in place for all the subjects.

I have also made a project progress wall in my classroom. Previously, I have found it challenging to keep track of the stages students are up to for their projects. Having the project wall will enable students to see the major milestones of the project and allow me and the whole class to visually see where everyone is up to.

This project will be launched to the class next week. Watch this space for updates 🙂

This year I’m trialling flipped learning for my Year 7 class. I have one Year 7 class who I teach for 5 subjects – English, Maths, Science, Geography and History. For maths, I’ve decided to try flipped learning in order to be more efficient at differentiated learning.

So what made me feel the need to try flipped learning? In the first couple of weeks when I had maths lessons with my class, I’d find myself spending 20-30 minutes explaining the concept and doing worked examples as whole class instruction. I found that the whole class instruction treated every student as the same; that every student knew nothing about the concepts I was explaining. However the reality was that some students already knew how to do the maths I was explaining. Some students didn’t but picked it up quickly. Some students needed the explanations to be repeated. Other students needed individual instruction. I asked myself, ‘How can I better differentiate my maths lessons so that students are able to move at their own pace and allow me to provide individualised instruction more easily?’ The answer was flipped learning with OfficeMix.

Here’s an example of one of my OfficeMix maths videos:
https://mix.office.com/embed/16o5y0wf7l85l

I’m not doing the traditional flipped learning where students watch explanation videos at home and then do the exercises in class. I’ve modified it so that students watch the explanation videos in class. I find this version of modified flipped learning work for my students.

So here’s the ups and downs I have found so far with flipped learning:

Ups

• OfficeMix is a really easy tool for making instruction/explanation videos. Because it is part of PowerPoint, it is extremely accessible to teachers (all teachers are familiar with PowerPoint). OfficeMix also have analytics where you can see how many times students have viewed a video and how long they spent watching certain sections. I have not used this feature yet.
• Flipped learning allows my students to move at their own pace. Those who pick up concepts very quickly can move on quickly. Those that need more time can rewind and watch certain parts again. This then enables me to go around to each student and help them as individuals.
• The videos allow students (and their families) to review the explanations at a later date, which is great for revision.

Downs (I prefer to label them as “areas to work on”)

• Flipped learning is an acquired skill and needs to be taught. Flipped learning requires students to be independent learners, to know themselves whether they understand a concept or require further help. As a teacher, I need to teach this to my students.
• Making the videos do take time. I have 4 hours of maths a week and I find that 1 to 2 videos per week is the most effective. We don’t have new videos in every lesson.
• The need to copy information – I found that with the videos, some students did not take the time to process the information. They just watched it. In my latest videos, I have included instructions for students to copy the worked examples in the video as I believe the act of writing out the working out process will allow students to take the time to process the information.

So far, I think this version of flipped learning is working for my students. I am planning to evaluate this strategy with student surveys and focus groups in a few week’s time.