Why don't we see other stars besides the sun in the daytime?
We developed some initial models and agreed that we didn't really know.
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So after establishing consensus on why we experience daytime and nighttime, we agreed that we should go back to the DQB to see related questions. There was a question that stood out for us, and that was:
Why don't we see other stars besides the sun in the daytime? We developed some initial models and agreed that we didn't really know.
So we turned to developing a physical model to helping us better understand this phenomenon, using our Chromebooks' cameras to capture first-hand evidence of what this would look like from the Earth's perspective.
Each group was required to take as many pictures as they could with their physical models to explain why we don't see stars in the daytime. They uploaded those pictures into a shared Google Slides presentation, and explained what was going on in each picture. Some groups even took videos! Check out their work (each group's presentation is linked in the Google Drawing below).
A snippet of the students' slides presentations (in case you didn't have time to look through all of them!)
And after evaluating everyone's physical models and evidence, we sat as a class to make a similarities/differences chart to see how our models compared regarding the phenomenon. What a great way to figure this all out 5th grade!
We agreed to figure out about sunrise and sunset first, as this would help explain lots of our questions (or so we hoped!). Here are some of the initial models we developed: We recognized many similarities in our models trying to explain sunrise and sunset, and that they included both the Sun and the Earth present. Most models included some ideas of movement, but we didn't really agree on the movements. We also didn't agree on sizes--some models showed the Earth bigger than the Sun, and vice versa, while some even showed them being the same size. We also had differences in how we showed the light, and we didn't know if the moon had something to do with all this. We DID agree though, that a 3D representation of this phenomenon might help us. So we set up shop with some flashlights and Earths. And here's what this looked like: Students even wanted to take pictures from their own view... We will finalize our ideas tomorrow as we establish consensus. Hopefully we can see what other questions we can answer!
With our DQB up and running, we spent time thinking of possible investigations we could do to answer all our questions! Check out ideas...we have truly come so far in 5th grade! We agreed that we should figure out sunrise/sunset first, as this would hopefully touch on lots of things we need to figure out about the Earth and the Sun and the movements associated with each.
So after we figured out related phenomena to the "Mystery Sun" video, we set off to ask some questions that will hopefully get us to explaining how this mystery sun thing happens. Before we asked questions, however, we all agreed that all these phenomena shared reoccurring patterns between the Earth and the sky. So this is exactly what became our driving question for the unit: What causes patterns to occur between the Earth and the sky?We sat in a scientists' circle and shared out our questions one by one, trying to link our questions to one another. Here's an up close view of all the questions we asked (from the two sections of fifth grade)! Each of the two sections is split up by Post-It note color (light yellow and non-light yellow color). Tomorrow we'll be working on figuring out ways we can answer our questions by creating possible investigation ideas!
Wait. What is happening here? Is this real?
YUP. So what do you notice and wonder? What related phenomena can you think of? We kicked off our new unit with this mystery sun video! We'll be trying to figure out what is happening here as it relates to what we know and experience daily in our own lives. |