And Now for Something Completely Different

Image from NASA/JPL

As I was getting ready for school this morning, I couldn’t help but reflect on the lesson we wrapped up in class yesterday. It was a compare/contrast lesson looking at Pluto in relationship to both the eight planets and the Kuiper Belt Objects. The point of the lesson was to highlight the reasons Pluto is no longer classified as a planet. When I developed the lesson, I assumed students brought a strong understanding of the basic details of the planets. However, as I talked with students, it seemed like they knew less than I expected.

I was thinking about this and trying to decide what to do today. I was so close to postponing what I had planned today to concentrate on the planets. However, I decided to gather additional data today to see if that was necessary or not. Plus, the lesson I had planned today was a concept attainment lesson on gravity and inertia in relationship to the solar system. It was on the same theme of the planets in our solar system, so teaching this today and planetary information tomorrow would not feel out of sequence.

During our warm up today, I asked the students to write one fact about each of the planets. As we shared together, I realized that a few students had strong background knowledge, but most of my students did not know as much as they needed to. I also asked my students if they wanted to spend a day learning about the planets. The majority of them indicated that they would like to spend time on the planets.

Tonight I put together the ideas I have been trying to figure out since this morning-how to present the information. I knew I wanted the acquisition of the material they needed to know to be interactive and focused.  It is very convenient that I have eight lab groups, and there are also eight planets! I decided all students will start out at their home planet. They will become experts on their planet. I plan on providing them with some basic information. Then, we will play musical chairs. I’ll play music (Holst’s The Planets), and students will move to find a partner from a different home planet. They will then share their information with each other. We will repeat the process until everyone has the information on all eight planets.

I have never tried this musical chairs style of sharing information before! I hope it works out tomorrow. If it doesn’t work during first period, I guess I will be brainstorming a different way to share the information before my remaining classes! I’ll share how it goes tomorrow with some tips for making it work (hopefully!).

Have you ever scrapped a lesson at the last minute and totally changed the course of the day? I seem to do it often in response to the needs of my students!

By Janelle

Space geek, science nerd extraordinaire. That's me! Want to know more, visit the About page.

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