3rd Grade Science Activity

Technology is becoming more and more prominent in our culture, especially for the rising generation.  As teachers, it is our responsibility to incorporate technology into the learning process in order to connect and reach the students in an effective way.  Technology is hands on and helps the students to learn on a more individual level and

 interact with the content knowledge.  

By using technology in the classroom we are touching on all three knowledges of TPACK.  This lesson uses the appropriate te

chnology to teach the Utah Core Curriculum for 3rd grade science.  Our lesson plan is based on these objectives:

Objective 2: 

Describe the movement of Earth and the moon and the ap

parent movement of other bodies through the sky.

   b.  Use a chart to show that the moon orbits Earth approximately every 28 days.

   d.  Use a model to demonstrate why it seems to a person on Earth that the sun, 

planets, and stars appear to move across the sky.

To teach objective 2b the teacher will have their students explore Google Earth to discover the placement of the moon. Once they have found the moon they can begin the science project.  This activity will take 20 minutes of each day over the course of 28 days (the time it takes for the moon to orbit the Earth).  Each day students will take a screen shot of the phase of the moon for that day and describe what they see.  Students will post their screen shots and descriptions

 on their blogs daily.  Once students have a collection of the 28 day orbit of the moon, they will be able to recognize all of the phases of the moon and that it orbits the Earth to cause these phases.  This orbit is repeated each month.  Each phase looks different because

of the placement of the moon in relation to the Earth and the Sun.  This science activity could be set up as a center. 

To teach objective 2d, the teacher will direct a student discussion using the program Stellarium.  Stellarium is a way to watch the atmosphere pass by the Earth from a stationary location. The class will use their city as the location from which to observe the sky.  The teacher will pick an object, such as the moon or a constellation to focus on and show the students its movement across the sky.  On Stellarium there is an option to speed up tim

e. This is a visual demonstration that illustrates the objective.  The teacher can conduct a discussion about why the stars and planets appear to move across the sky.  Students will understand that the Earth rotates on its axis as it orbits the sun.  After the discussion, students can take turns exploring Stellarium in greater detail.

For this lesson plan the teacher relies heavily on technology. It enhances the project in many ways from teaching how to use technology and learning from it in a way that couldn't just be observed. While using the blogs to post the pictures of the phases of the moon, the students are logging their observations. This displays the information in a way that they can annalyze what they have seen and come to a conclusion about the different phases of the moon. Using google earth is a great way to incorporate technology because the children can do it in or out of class and weather will not be an issue.