We astronomers are a funny lot. We tend to use words in weird ways. We like to use one word, like color, to describe any of several different concepts and thereby become the source of misconceptions, like saying Sun is a yellow star when we know that its actually cottony white to the eyes of […]
Read More Eclipses vs. Occultations…Let’s Keep Them SeparateThis week was mostly devoted to informal formative assessment (I’m really beginning to hate those words). Students were asked to explain aspects of a stick’s shadow’s behavior in terms of, for example, Sun’s diurnal and annual motions. Example questions would be something like: “In one sentence, explain why a stick’s noon shadow changes length during […]
Read More Learning Critical Thinking Through Astronomy, Week 11The week began with my expectation that students had watched a YouTube clip showing an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s COSMOS series in which Sagan explains Eratosthenes’ work with shadows. Students don’t realize it yet, but this topic is the culmination of all of the previous activities. It’s the reason for the critical thinking activities. It’s […]
Read More Learning Critical Thinking Through Astronomy, Week 7I originally had one set of plans for this week but as sometimes happens, those plans changed radically. Instead of starting in on the next series of activities, we spent some time doing some formative assessment (and I’m really beginning to hate the word “assessment” because of the current political climate in which it’s (mis)used […]
Read More Learning Critical Thinking Through Astronomy, Week 5