Challenging Misconceptions
Running Head: CHALLENGING MISCONCEPTIONS
Challenging Misconceptions:
Colorado Science Standard 4.3-5.9
Erica Harlow
Vanderbilt University
Spring 2009
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Challenging Misconceptions
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Abstract
This paper will examine the Colorado learning standard required for the upper elementary
grades to understand the day-and-night cycle as well as how the orbit of the Earth around
the Sun completes one year. Extensive research by Vosniadou has uncovered common
mental models children have of the earth’s shape. These models are the sphere, the
flattened sphere, the hollow sphere, the dual earth, the disc earth and the rectangular
earth. Given the cognitive abilities of children and their intuitive mental models of the
earth during the third through fifth grade years, this standard is above the cognitive
ability level for the average upper elementary student. The National Science Teachers
Association and the National Research Council recommend students learning the daynight cycle standard later in their education. Therefore, the learning focus should be to
conceptualize and accept the spherical shape of the earth. This suggested learning focal
point is appropriately challenging for students of this age. Concentrating exclusively on
this concept will provide a solid foundation for future learning about the day-night cycle.
Teaching students the abstract concept of the shape of the earth is not a simple task. A
spherical earth is entirely counter-intuitive and will pose a real challenge to the teacher.
This paper will explore how to best introduce and teach the spherical shape of the earth.
The Great Shape Debate is both a lesson and an activity that will promote active learning
and allow students to deeply explore the concept of the earth’s shape. The concept will
be introduced with an open discussion on the most common mental models of the earth’s
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shape allowing students to think about and relate to the models. The debate will require
students to research and use visual representations, demonstrations and discourse to learn
the shape of the earth. The Great Shape Debate is a performance task that will help
teachers assess what students are thinking and how to move them forward in their
thinking. This paper will pay close attention to understanding learners and learning,
supporting a healthy classroom environment, utilizing curriculum and instructional
strategies as well as appropriate assessment techniques.
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INTRODUCTION
Educational learning standards need to correspond with student cognitive learning
abilities to allow for student comprehension. However, there are standards that do not
correlate with these abilities and therefore, contribute to further student confusion. In
Colorado, sometime during the third, fourth and fifth grade years, students are expected
to learn science standard number 4.3-5.9 which states that, “the rotation of the earth on its
axis, in relation to the sun, produces the day-and-night cycle and the orbit of the earth
around the sun completes one year,” (Colorado State Department of Education, 2007).
Given the cognitive abilities of students at this age, this standard is implausible for the
average student. Educators should focus their efforts on having students master their
understanding of the scientifically accepted model of the earth as a rotating sphere
suspended in space. Active learning opportunities will best support student learning of
these abstract concepts. Only once this learning goal is accomplished, will it be possible
for students to start exploring the concept of the day-night and year cycles.
LEARNERS AND LEARNING
Understanding our learners is a vital component to teaching concepts. “It is only
when we understand how students think that we will be able to lead them slowly to form
increasingly more and more sophisticated mental models, closer to those that are
culturally accepted,” (Vosniadou, 1992, p. 8). Research on the cognitive abilities of nine
and ten year olds suggest that they struggle with abstractions (Wood, 2007, p. 111).
Learning about space and the earth-moon relationship is absolutely an abstraction since
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students are not able to see the solar system and learn concretely the lessons required of
them. Ten-year olds enjoy organizing, categorizing and factual learning. Though they are
beginning to think more abstractly, they are still tied to rules and logic (Wood, 2007, p.
111). This is the age in which students are best with concrete learning. The National
Science Teachers Association supports the education standards set by the National
Research Council in 1996 (see table below). This council set their standards to reflect the
students in their developmental stages. Students in the third and fourth grades learn
about objects in the sky and observe changes in the earth and sky. Fifth graders are
exposed to the role of the earth in the solar system but are not expected to fully learn the
day-night and year cycles until eighth grade.
TABLE 6.4. EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE STANDARDS
(National Research Council, 1996)
LEVELS K-4
Properties of earth
materials
Objects in the sky
Changes in earth and sky
LEVELS 5-8
LEVELS 9-12
Structure of the earth
Energy in the earth system
system
Earth's history
Geochemical cycles
Earth in the solar system Origin and evolution of the earth
system
Origin and evolution of the universe
“This criterion includes increasing emphasis on abstract and conceptual understandings
as students progress from kindergarten to grade 12, (National Research Council, 1996).”
However according to the current Colorado standards, students must not only learn the
characteristics of a rotating spherical earth by the fifth grade but they must also learn the
relationship the earth has with the sun; thus creating the day-night and year cycles. This
Challenging Misconceptions
information indicates that the third, fourth and fifth grades may not be the best time to
move into learning the day-night and year cycles in space.
Learning about students’ prior knowledge provides a foundation for creating
lessons and class learning goals. In 1992, Vosniadou and Brewer conducted research on
how sixty students in the first, third and fifth grades thought of the earth and its shape.
They discovered six primary mental models conceptualized by the students. Only eight
of the third graders and twelve of the fifth graders held the scientifically accepted model
of a spherical earth. The most similar model to this was the flattened sphere where it
appears that the children took the idea given to them by adults of a spherical earth and
added in their personal experiences of walking on flat surfaces. This thinking produced
the flattened sphere model. Some children combined the two conceptual frameworks to
create a third mental model called the hallow sphere model where both their idea of the
earth and the information from adults seem to work together. Other children appear to
have simply created a dual earth model where there are two earths—one on which we
live (flat) and one that is spherical. A common mental model develops from adults
telling children that the earth is round. They then imagine the earth as a pancake—both
round and flat. A 1992 Vosniadou and Brewer interview with a fifth grader went like
this:
5th Grade Student: The earth is round but when you look at it, it is flat.
Researcher: Why is that?
5th Grade Student: Because if you were looking around it would be round.
Researcher: But what is the real shape of the earth?
5th Grade Student: Round, like a thick pancake.
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This moves us towards the purely intuitive model of a rectangular earth. This is
entirely intuitive because it is solely based on students’ daily experiences with the earth
and shows no signs of the scientifically accepted model of a spherical earth. (See figure 1
below.)
(Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992, p. 549)
These mental models represent deeply imbedded misconceptions that are rooted
in the daily experiences of children. Until these misconceptions are corrected, they will
effectively disable the students from moving on to scientifically accepted models
(Sneider & Ohadi, 1997). Children want to believe that the earth is a sphere but they get
confused because this notion goes against concepts that they know are true due to their
everyday experiences. In an effort to make them both accurate, students will combine
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them to make synthetic models which are a cross between solely intuitive models and
scientifically accepted models (Vosniadou, 1992). This information tells us that most
children in grades three through five are not ready to move on to learning the required
curriculum standard numbered 4.3-5.9. Educators must first help students accept and
understand the spherical model of the earth.
The seemingly simple task of guiding students to reach scientifically accepted
earth models is not so simple. The type of restructuring required of those students, who
have synthetic or intuitive models of the earth, will be radical because the children must
overcome the ties that bind them to these mental models (Vosniadou & Brewer, 1987).
To reach the current standard, the students will need to move from a completely different
mental model of the earth to a new one; many will need to change their belief that the
earth is the center of the universe to a heliocentric concept of the universe; and many of
them will start to conceptualize the inclusion of rotations and orbits (Vosniadou &
Brewer, 1987). This type of abstract thinking may begin at age ten but more commonly
starts to take shape at age twelve (Woods, 2007). Understanding the difficulties that
students will face when learning the expected standard is important because it is
reflective of the magnitude of what is expected of the students and the difficult task of
teaching the projected goals.
Before teachers consider moving students on to the earth-sun relationship creating
the night-day cycle, they must make sure that students master the scientifically accepted
model of the earth. Educators need to anticipate the transition of the students’ move from
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their initial mental models to the scientifically accepted spherical model will be gradual
and difficult. The students will need to see the flaws in their own thinking to make this
transition (Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992).
This form of conceptual change requires the
teacher to develop metaconceptual awareness in students. It is necessary that students
develop theoretical frameworks with greater explanatory power (Vosniadou & Ioannides,
1998). According to Bransford (2000), there are instructional strategies which teachers
can utilize to encourage conceptual change. Teachers can attempt to bridge students’
thinking by guiding them with leading questions, such as, why do you believe that? How
do you know? How did you decide? The reasoning behind these questions is to have the
students come to their own conclusions about their misconceptions. If the students are
able to see the faults in their misconceptions and change them on their own, then these
new connections will be stronger. “Research indicates that students often can parrot back
correct answers on a test that might be erroneously interpreted as displaying the
eradication of a misconception, but the same misconception often resurfaces when
students are probed weeks or months later,” (Bransford, 2000, p. 180). Student learning
must encompass a solid grasp of the earth’s spherical shape for this knowledge will lay a
foundation to grow on in learning more abstract understanding such as the earth-sunmoon relationships.
Children learn new information in two ways; they can either assimilate the new
information, when the learning fits within current knowledge structures, or accommodate
the new information, when the existing information must change to accommodate the
new—this often meets resistance and can take longer to learn. Concepts that are counter-
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intuitive require an additional step, accommodation, to learn. Many children have a
difficult time learning the scientifically accepted models of the earth and the universe
because it directly contradicts their daily experiences. Every day students observe that
the sun and moon cross the earth’s sky, that what is dropped falls down, and that the sky
is up and the earth is down. A teacher can not simply tell the students the earth is a
rotating sphere where people live on all sides and expect the children to dismiss
everything they know to be true and accept what they are told. They must personally
challenge their own thinking and search for new models that hold true.
Upon understanding learners and learning it becomes evident that at this time in
their cognitive growth, students can start to learn and accept the culturally accepted
model of the spherical earth. However, curriculum standard, 4.3-5.9, should be put on
hold until middle school at which time the children will have a solid foundation which
they can grow upon in learning the current standard like the National Research Council
suggests. Students must accomplish two things before moving on to the current standard:
(1) they need to understand and accept the spherical earth model and (2) they must reach
a point in their cognitive growth that allows for abstract reasoning. For students to
succeed in learning the spherical earth model, educators must provide a proper learning
environment that supports higher-order thinking.
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
The learning environment is equally important to student education as is the direct
instruction from the teacher. The classroom environment should promote learning
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through curiosity and risk-taking. There are a variety of factors that contribute to a
healthy learning environment. The classroom should be safe, both emotionally and
physically, for teachers and students. Incorporating prior knowledge into the lesson plans
utilizes a foundation to learn upon. Discourse and feedback should be constant and
welcomed. There are a variety of necessary contributing factors to a proper learning
environment.
Both student and teacher attitudes effect the learning environment. According to
Carin & Sund (1989), the science classroom should support curiosity and
experimentation while encouraging a balance of skepticism and open-mindedness. The
science classroom should also have students demonstrating higher-order thinking by
asking insightful questions, devising problems and theories, designing and implementing
investigations, and analyzing information from data collected. The science classroom
should be a safe environment that supports learners taking risks while learning from
experiential successes and/or failures.
Discourse is necessary to further learning in any classroom and most significantly
to a science classroom. The science classroom should mimic the real world practice of
science in order to make learning more meaningful to the students. Discourse is specially
beneficial in science learning because of the natural process of science through inquiry.
Science discourse gives way to challenging misconceptions because comparing ideas can
shed light on personal misunderstandings.
According to Vosniadou & Brewer (1992), in order to restructure students’ naïve
conceptions, children need to be provided with enough reasons to question their
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ontological beliefs and with a different explanatory framework to replace the one
they have constructed on the basis of their everyday experience. This can be done
in environments that facilitate group discussion and the verbal expression of
ideas.
Developing a community approach to education positively affects student learning
because it allows for new ideas to be considered and explored. “In challenging one
another’s thoughts and beliefs, students must be explicit about their meanings; they must
negotiate conflicts in belief or evidence; and they must share and synthesize their
knowledge to achieve understanding,” (Bransford, 2000, p. 184). This leads to
metaconceptual awareness which is vital to students accommodating counter-intuitive
information such as the spherical model of the earth and eventually the day-night cycle.
Students have the opportunity to question their personal beliefs more often when they are
in a classroom where they are constantly having to explain their thinking to teachers and
classmates (Vosniadou & Ioannides, 1998).
The students are the heart of an ideal classroom because learning should be
centered on student prior knowledge, student feedback, student participation and the
students’ community. Lesson plans, learning tools and experiments should all be
designed in response to students’ prior knowledge in an effort to further student learning.
Equally important components to the learning environment are continuous feedback,
encouraging student participation, inclusion of families and community members, and
technological tools (Brophy, 2004). Continuous feedback helps students know where
they are in their learning and where they are going. Every student has something to
contribute to the classroom. The quiet students should be encouraged to share their ideas
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for their classmates to learn from and discuss. Community members with personal
experiences or specialties in a subject of study can be a valuable resource to utilize in the
classroom. Colorado has access to universities and colleges with observatories in most of
the major cities. There are astrological societies in each of the major cities as well. (For
a list of Colorado Resources, see Appendix A). Learning counter-intuitive concepts
requires extra special attention to the learning environment due to the fact that it is an
abstract form of leaning which requires the students to explore concepts that conflict with
their daily experiences.
CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTURAL STRATEGIES
Research demonstrates there are several techniques that are successful in the
planning and implementation of curriculum and instruction in an elementary science
classroom. The first focus is in the proper ordering of the learning goals. Each mini-goal
needs to build upon the previous lesson. The next focus is on the proper use of tools for
learning. Discourse in learning is a vital part of the learning puzzle. Active inquiry is a
positive and strong way to support student learning. Student understanding is stronger
when the learning is self-directed.
One of the most fundamental aspects to teaching abstract and counter-intuitive
science concepts is to properly order the learning objectives. Students must master the
necessary prerequisite scientific understandings one at a time to move on to more
complicated concepts that depend on those initial understandings. If mastery of one
concept is not accomplished before moving on to another, the students will likely create
synthetic models that are not scientifically accepted and will consequentially hinder
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further learning in that topic. Furthermore, students may very well just memorize the
desired answers for tests while still holding on to old ideas (Vosniadou, 1992).
“Explanations of the day/night cycle on the basis of the earth’s axis rotation cannot be
understood before students know not only that the earth is a rotating sphere but also that
the moon revolves around the earth, (Vosniadou & Ioannides, 1998, p. 1223).”
Scaffolding the lessons in the proper order is imperative to support student learning.
Therefore before students move on to the currently required standard, they must fully
understand the concept of a spherical earth.
In the typical classroom educators will show their class a globe, tell them that the
earth is round and then move on—expecting students to accept that the globe is a model
of the earth on which we all live. “The presence of the globe does not by itself solve the
problem of understanding the spherical shape of the earth and that the cultural artifact is
interpreted and sometimes distorted by what the children already know,” (Vosniadou,
Skopeliti, & Ikospentaki, 2005, p. 17). The teacher should encourage the students to
explore and analyze the scientifically accepted model of the earth because the experience
provides ample opportunities for the students to think critically, and thus strengthen their
scientific thinking (Kenyon, Schwarz, & Hug, 2008). The globe can be used as a support
to an instructional lesson but not as the lesson in its entirety. To encourage an active
learning environment, the globe can be used as a tool for exploration and furthering
understanding as it does in The Great Shape Debate.
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It is now common for standards to require teachers to touch on many topics
without exploring them. The breadth of coverage is too vast and leaves many
misconceptions in its wake, especially when dealing with abstract ideas. Students should
be able to explore deeper into the major concepts and have the opportunity to investigate
the hows and whys instead of learning by rote memorization. The following activity
allows students to explore the abstract concept of the earth’s shape.
The Great Shape Debate is an activity/lesson that will promote active learning and
allow students to deeply explore the concept of the earth’s shape. On the first day the
teacher should openly discuss the most common mental models of the earth (sphere,
flattened sphere, hollow sphere and the flat pancake). The shape of the earth may not be
something that the students have ever stopped to think about deeply. Getting common
ideas and misconceptions out into the open is a valuable way to get students to think
about and analyze their personal ideas about the earth’s shape. The teacher should use
props such as a globe, a slightly deflated beach ball, a hollowed-out pumpkin, and a
pancake, to demonstrate the four most common ideas that people of all ages have about
the earth’s shape. Next, the teacher should allow the students to identify with the mental
model which they believe. In these small groups of students, the children will plan for a
debate. The purpose of the debate is to have the students try to prove to their classmates
that their idea (mental model) of the earth’s shape makes the most sense. If a student has
an entirely different idea then he/she can be a team of his/her own. The teams must
collect data through experiments and research to back their ideas during the Great Shape
Debate. They can get creative with materials (clay, foam, posters, computer technology)
to create visual models to demonstrate to the other students that their model of the earth
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makes the most sense. I would hope and expect that during their group discussions and
planning for the debate, students may change their opinion. Students should be free to
change groups if they can explain their reasoning to the teacher and to the newly joined
group and thus, contribute to the new group’s debate planning. The next step of the
lesson is to have the debate. The Great Shape Debate is an example of active learning
because the students are required “to design and execute experiments, to think about their
ideas, to listen to the ideas of others, and in general to assume control of their learning,”
(Vosniadou, et al., 2001, p. 382). The teacher acts as a guide during the planning and
implementation of the debate. This allows the students to direct their own learning,
explore the earth’s shape and come to their own conclusions.
Should the students agree on a different model than the spherical earth, then the
teacher can present a demonstration to the class comparing the model they agreed on to
the spherical earth model. Before this happens, the teacher should lead a discussion
about the moon and how it looks at night (this knowledge can be attained by having the
students keep a nightly diary of the moon’s appearance during the month prior to the
debate). The teacher should hear from the students that the moon sometimes looks like a
crescent. The teacher can use a lamp without its lampshade for the sun, a small sphere
such as a tennis ball for the moon, and a larger sphere such as a junior sized volleyball for
the earth to show how the spherical earth will cast the crescent shape shadow on the
moon while the model that they agreed upon does not. The teacher should allow for
further exploration if needed. As a bonus, this demonstration will lay a foundation for
future learning about orbits.
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To negate memorizing facts, an active learning environment must be established.
Active learning is a vital element to conceptualizing counter-intuitive ideas of space.
Learning is an effortful and mindful process and students should be encouraged to
construct their own knowledge and skills through active processing, rather than
being passive listeners. This can be done by asking students to participate in
projects, to solve complex problems, to design and execute experiments, to think
about their ideas, to listen to the ideas of others, and in general to assume control
of their learning. (Vosniadou, et al., 2001, p. 382)
With the previously recommended shape debate, the students will be actively learning
through their personal research, experiments and arguments in their quest to convince the
other students that their model of the earth makes the most sense. Students need to see
the flaws in their purely intuitive thinking before they move on to accepting new ideas.
This dissonance can best be achieved through classroom discourse. According to
Vosniadou’s research in 1992, there are four types of questioning that best get students
thinking about their mental models. These four categories are (1) factual questions,
(2) explanation questions, (3) generative questions, and (4) confrontation questions. An
example of a factual question is: what is the shape of the earth? It will assess students’
factual knowledge of the earth. The goal behind explanation questions is to get the
students to explain the reasoning behind their factual knowledge. For example a teacher
could ask the student, “why they think the earth is a sphere if we walk on flat sidewalks
all the time?” Explanation questions can tell teachers if students are using the correct
vocabulary while thinking something different than the intended definition of the
correctly used terminology. Generative questions get the student thinking in scenarios
like the “if you were walking for days” question. This type of question will also allow
teachers to see if students truly understand the spherical concept or if they are creating
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intermediate mental models. The confrontation questions are designed to probe students
who have given contradicting answers to some of the previous questions. The purpose of
this is to get the students to think about the hows and whys of their knowledge. The
forms of talk that should be encouraged are those that create the dissonance in their own
thinking such as generative and confrontation questions. As in the great shape debate, the
class should openly discuss and compare the different ways students visualize the earth.
In having them defend their reasoning, students can discover flaws in their own thinking.
This can then lead to accepting scientifically recognized ideas. Using active learning
instruction encourages students to become more self-directed, promotes intrinsic rather
than extrinsic motives and provides for more positive experiences.
ASSESSMENT
The aim of assessment should be to provide ample opportunities for the students
to demonstrate their abilities and succeed in the process of learning while also giving
educators opportunities to adjust their teaching when needed. Therefore, it is imperative
to provide a variety of assessments during the school year. These assessments come in
many forms including: (1) preliminary, (2) formative or ongoing, (3) summative, (4)
formal or informal, and (5) authentic through performance based assessments.
Preliminary assessments provide information on prior knowledge of the students for the
teachers. These are especially important as they will help teachers uncover the
misconceptions of students’ ideas of the earth’s shape. Formative assessments are given
during instruction with the purpose to make instructional adjustments while summative
assessments are taken after the instruction period with the purpose to gauge student
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learning. Assessments can be formal through test, quizzes, and tasks, or informal through
observations of students while working or during class discourse. Performance based
assessments have students demonstrate their thinking and learned skills by completing an
authentic task. These tasks apply the learned concepts to “real life” challenges. The
Great Shape Debate is a performance task that will help teachers assess what students are
thinking and how to move them forward in their thinking. All types of assessment are
equally important and provide unique information for the student and teacher.
Before the unit starts, educators should get an idea of student perceptions of the
earth and space relationships through a preliminary assessment. This can, and should be,
in many forms addressing multiple modalities to enable all students to fully communicate
their thinking. A KWHL chart is a simple and easy way to assess student preliminary
understandings of a given topic at the start of a unit. This chart maps out first thoughts,
class goals and learning outcomes. (See Appendix B for KWHL chart template.)
Educators ought to use this information to develop the learning objectives and focus on
students who need help or who have the potential to contribute to the furthering of class
thinking. However for this unit on the earth’s shape, the preliminary assessment needs to
get an idea of the individual student’s ideas on the earth and its shape without the
influence of their classmates. For this reason, I would suggest a more personal
assessment in the form of drawings and questions. I would then do the KWHL chart after
the students have formed their small groups for The Great Shape Debate.
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Through group discourse and open-ended questions, educators can make students
thinking visible. These deliberate practices allow the teacher to scrutinize student
thinking and expose flaws in assessment practices, detect special learning needs, and
expose possible misconceptions. According to Vosniadou and Brewer, the following
questions were beneficial in exposing student thinking of the earth’s shape:







What is the shape of the earth?
How do you know the earth is round?
What is above the earth? What is below the earth?
Where do people live on earth?
Is there an edge to the earth?
Would you ever reach the edge of the earth? If so, can you fall off?
If you walked and walked for many days in a straight line, where would you end
up?
The teacher can then adjust current instruction and address the needs of the students.
Discourse enables the teacher to continually and informally assess where the students are
in their learning and any misconceptions they may develop through the learning unit.
The learning unit must always be evolving depending on the learning speeds and needs of
the students.
The assessment of elementary science learning should be continuous. One form
of ongoing assessment is the use of periodic drawings. At the start of the unit, have the
students draw their ideas. The teacher should give each student a blank piece of paper
and tell them to first draw the earth. Then the teacher should tell the students to draw
where the moon and stars are and next where the people live. This activity from
Vosniadou and Brewer in 1989 can root out the students with questionable ideas of the
earth’s shape. Some of Vosniadou and Brewer’s subjects drew the people as well as the
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moon and stars inside the circle which represented the earth. This implies that the student
might think of the earth as a hollow sphere. Some students might draw a circle to show
the earth and then draw a line with people on it and the moon and stars above it. These
students may think of the earth as a pancake or have the dual earth mental model. “The
process of drawing helps students consolidate information about a concept, while
providing teachers with a document to use to help identify any misconceptions,” (Glynn
& Muth, 2008, p. 49). At the mid-point of the unit and at the end as well, do the same
drawing assessment. To root out more ideas the teacher can also ask the students to draw
where we live and then were the people in China live. This will get them thinking about
people who live on the “other side of the earth” and what that might mean for the earth’s
shape. Additionally, these drawings can be used as a form of self-assessment by having
the students compare early drawings with their end-of-unit drawings. (See Appendix C
for example of student self-assessment drawing booklet.) To overcome intuitive and
synthetic science thinking, students must question their own thinking and see the need to
change it. Self-awareness contributes to this opportunity to adjust thinking.
Performance based assessments focus on discovering student understandings and
does not support the regurgitation of vocabulary words and out-of-context facts.
Performance based assessments are authentic tasks that allow students to connect their
education to their real world lives. The Great Shape Debate is an excellent example of a
performance based assessment because the students are actively trying to convince the
rest of the class that their idea of the earth’s shape makes the most sense through
research, visual representations, demonstrations and discourse. Self explanation and the
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teaching of others often help students’ personal learning while also serving the learning
of others. The teaching of others is an excellent form of performance-based assessment
because it requires a deep understanding of the material and helps the students further
explore their thinking. The teacher can learn if a student has a deep understanding and is
ready to move on to gravity by observing his/her involvement in the Great Shape Debate
and assessing the drawings by looking for where the people, moon and stars are drawn.
Once students have a deep understanding of the spherical earth, the educator should move
on to gravity, rotations and orbits and thus setting the stage for learning the day-night and
year cycle.
CONCLUSION
The Colorado learning standard 4.3-5.9, which requires students in the upper
elementary grades to comprehend the day-and-night cycle as well as how the orbit of the
earth around the sun completes one year, is valuable for the students to learn; however, it
is too early in their development to cover at this designated time. Children at this age are
concrete thinkers and are only starting to explore abstract thinking. Given their cognitive
abilities and their intuitive mental models of the earth, this standard in the curriculum is
exceptionally advanced for the average upper elementary student. Keeping in mind the
importance of ordering student education, the learning focus at this time should be to
conceptualize and accept the rotating spherical shape of the earth. Active learning is
especially fitting for science because it allows for critical thinking and strengthens
student science knowledge. The Great Shape Debate will allow students to research and
use visual representations, demonstrations and discourse to learn the shape of the earth.
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Assessment is best when continuous and in a variety of forms. Educators can capitalize
on student thinking through preliminary assessments, group discourse, drawings, and
performance-based assessments. Following these initial steps will set a solid foundation
for learning about the day-night and year cycle.
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Appendix A: Resources in Colorado for Space Science Exploration
Who
Discovery Science
Center
Where
703 E. Prospect Rd.
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Contact Information
Website: www.dcsm.org
Phone Number:
970-472-3990
What
 Starlab Planetarium
Classes, they can
tailor them to the
student needs
 Speakers
 Speakers
 Resources
Center for
Astrophysics and
Space Astronomy
with the University
of Colorado, Boulder
University of Colorado
389 UCB
Boulder, Colorado
80309-0389
USA
Website:
http://casa.colorado.edu/
Northern Colorado
Astronomical
Society
Fort Collins, CO
Bob Michael, President
Email: Pres@ncastro.org
 Speakers
 Observatory observation nights
Denver Astrological
Society with the
University of Denver
Chamberlin
Observatory
2930 E. Warren Ave.
Denver, Colorado
80210
Website:
www.denverastrosociety.org/
 Speakers
 Star Parties
Colorado Springs
Astrological Society
Colorado Springs, CO
Phone Number:
303-492-4050
Phone Number:
303-871-5172
Website:
www.csastro.org
 Resources
 Speakers
Phone Number:
719-651-8476
The Space
Foundation
 Educator’s National Science
Standards and Lessons Bank
 Online Science Labs
 NASA Educator Resource Center
 Teacher Education
Headquarters:
Colorado Springs, CO
Website:
www.spacefoundation.org
Field Offices:
Washington, D.C.
Houston, TX
Cape Canaveral, FL
Phone Number:
719-576-8000, ext. 141 or
800-691-4000
NASA
Across the country and
online
Educators Website:
www.nasa.gov/audience/fored
ucators/index.html
Student Website:
www.nasa.gov/audience/forstu
dents/index.html





Denver Museum of
Nature and Science
2001 Colorado Blvd.,
Denver, Colorado
80205
Website:
www.dmns.org
 Field Trips to the Museum
 Programs at School
 Planetarium show featuring planets
and solar system
Phone Number:
303-322-7009
Lesson plans
Online Materials
Materials for online purchase
Links to other resources
Speakers
Challenging Misconceptions
Appendix B: Student KWHL chart
(This can be complete as a whole class, in a small group, or individually.)
K
What I Know:
W
What I want
to know:
H
How I will learn it:
L
What I learned:
25
Challenging Misconceptions
26
Appendix C: Self-Assessment Picture Book
My very own KWHL chart:
My View of the Earth
K
W
H
L
By: ________________________
On the first day of the unit, this is how I
think the earth looks:
After the speaker from the Astrological
Society came to our class, this is how I
think the earth looks:
Where can people live?
Where can people live?
After our class trip to the planetarium, this
is how I think the earth looks:
After our class experiment, this is how I
think the earth looks:
Where can people live?
Where can people live?
On the last day of our unit, this is how I
think the earth looks:
1. How has my thinking about the shape of
the earth changed?
2. What caused my thinking to change?
Where can people live?
3. What questions do I have now?
Challenging Misconceptions
27
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