"Stringing Out the Spaces."
Today in science we went outdoors and used string to build a relative distance scale model of the earth, moon, and sun. This is adapted from an AIMS science lesson "Stringing Out the Spaces." Our sun was a plastic patio tabletop I spray-painted gold. An earth and moon were colored and taped to the ends of two pens. Using yarn and meter sticks, students measured out nine 10-meter lengths of string. A student holding the sun stood in the farthest corner of the soccer field, while the other students spread out from it in 10-meter lengths... until the string reached the earth and moon, being held up in the air by two other students (now up near the edge of the blacktop). As I ran up and down the space-string-line, I heard students saying: "Wow! The earth is THAT far away from the sun?" and "Look, the moon is so close!" Yes, relatively, it is. As we reflected later inside the classroom, they took away the big ideas: space is mostly... space; the sun is really far away; the moon is relatively close; and it's amazing, complicated, and exciting to send people and robots out into space.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
March 2020
AuthorMs. McGill is a public school librarian at Stony Point Elementary. She has previously taught all subjects in 4th & 5th grades, and creative nonfiction at UVa's Young Writers Workshop for nine summers. Categories |