The first change that I made was with the K-W-L chart. Since I had two students who couldn’t really read or write, I decided not to have them record on their handouts (I didn’t even hand them out) and instead I just recorded what they know (K) and what they wanted to know (W) about the moon on a large piece of paper for all to see. I decided to have the students draw a picture of what they thought the earth, moon, and sun look like in space, which was not part of my original plan. During this time of activating prior knowledge, I discovered how little these “students” actually knew about the moon, and also uncovered some misconceptions that they had. One student thought the moon looked different at different times because the clouds were covering it. Two students thought that the sun and the moon move around the earth, and two students said they had no idea why the moon changes shape.
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| Evan's drawing of the Sun, Moon, and Earth (age 7) |
They were so excited and tuned in to the video! As they watched, the video explained the movement of the moon around the earth and the earth around the sun. The one student (age 9) who thought the sun moved around the earth smiled and said, “Oh I was wrong, the sun doesn’t move the earth moves!” I observed the two older students when the video got to the part about the phases of the moon, and it was like a light bulb went on inside their heads. They both said “Oh yeah, we learned about this in school!” I was shocked that they said they had learned this in school, because when I asked them what they knew about the moon before the video, the only thing they could tell me is that the moon is made of rock and that it “shines” by reflecting light from the sun. They had no idea about the movement or phases of the moon, so it was apparent that they hadn’t really “learned” the phases—at least not in an effective manner where they actually understood the concept and remembered it.
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| Wyatt pretending to be the Sun (age 5) |
These kids seemed to find this site endlessly entertaining, and they even enjoyed taking the quizzes! The nice thing about this site is that Annie (the girl character from the video) reads the questions and she speaks slowly, so even the 5 year olds could take the quiz! I used the “Word Wall” feature on this site to go over vocabulary words with them, rather than have them copy them into vocabulary notebooks as noted in the original lesson plan. Most kids love jokes, so it was no surprise that they enjoyed reading the “Belly Up” comic strip and the “Pop a Joke” (all related to the moon). They had a lot of fun playing the game which was a space puzzle. All of the students really liked the “Draw About It” activity where they were able to draw the different phases of the moon using different colors of “crayons” and then they were able to print their creations to show mom and dad. J The older kids were really sweet during this activity-they helped the younger ones by holding down the “left click” while the little ones used their fingers to draw on the mouse pad. I printed out the activity page which was a moon calendar for each of them. They were excited to see when the moon would come out that night so that they could draw it on their calendars.
The students were so interested in exploring the BrainPOPJr website that I practically had to bribe them to get off of it with the Oreo cookies-which we used for the next activity. I used The Moon Book by Gail Gibbons, but it was too advanced for the 5 year olds, so I didn’t read the entire book, I skipped to the middle of the book and just read the part about the phases of the moon. They liked making the phases of the moon out of Oreos and eating them! I gave them a blank “Phases of the Moon” paper when we finished as an assessment had them draw the phases in order, starting with the new moon. The five year olds did a great job drawing the new moon, full moon, and “half-moon”. Two of the older kids were able to draw all of the phases, but one of them still got confused about which side is lit when it is waxing and when it is waning. Despite the confusion, they were all able to tell me that waxing means getting bigger and waning means getting smaller. For the final assessment, I printed both the easy and the hard quizzes (I didn’t really notice a difference in difficulty) from BrainPOPJr. The older students all got 10 out of 10 on the questions. I decided it was not age-appropriate to give the 5 year olds the paper quiz, as they could not read, but I did give them a copy when we went over the answers so they could at least hear the discussion and practice circling the correct answers. J We talked about all that they had learned and I added it to the “L” column of our K-W-L chart.
Overall, I think the technology in this lesson contributed greatly to the students’ understanding. Prior to introducing the technology, the students had very little to say about the moon. I observed that the students were deeply engaged as they watched the video, and some of them had a few “Ah-ha!” and “Oh yeah” moments. While they explored the BrainPOPJr activities on the moon, I noticed their attentive comments and interactions with each other. Their responses to my questions after viewing the video were much deeper and much more thoughtful than before! The two students (ages 9 and 10) who told me they had learned about the phases of the moon informed me that their teachers used a science book and pictures to teach, but not videos. The said that they liked the video on BrainPOPJr because the robot (Moby) was funny and it was easy to understand. I asked them if they had used BrainPOP before and they said yes, sometimes their teacher would show videos but they never got to do the activities or play any of the games. That is crazy to me because this is such a wonderful tool for teachers who want to supplement their curriculum! It is a fantastic tool for making difficult concepts easier for students to visualize and understand.
