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We would start off this lesson by just talking about the moon. Maybe asking the students what they already know about it. We would then look at their observations and see if they found any patterns concerning what they saw. I would ask them questions to get their brains in action, and those questions would be:
-Does anyone recognize any patterns in their observations?
-What do we think the moon will look like tonight? One week from tonight? And why?
-Is the moon getting smaller or larger? (Waxing or waning). And why do we think that is?
-How might this all relate to the sun?
As we are writing down our patterns and guesses on the sizes of the moon on one sheet of paper, I will also be writing down questions they might have on a second piece of paper.
We will then introduce the styrofoam balls and toothpicks. Before handing these out I will go over the appropriate uses of them, such as:
*No bouncing the balls on the ground.
*No throwing the balls.
*No poking our neighbors with the toothpicks.
Etc.
I will then explain how to put the toothpick in the ball and how to turn ourselves and the balls to make our light source the sun, us the earth, and the ball the moon. And though I do not know what it is just yet, somewhere in here I will explain the 'Moon Dance', which we will be learning about on Tuesday.
Once my group has done a couple rotations around the sun, we will sit back down and record our observations.
-How is this similar to what we saw happening with the moon?
-How might we see the moon if we were in a different part of the world?
-How is this experiment different from what we were seeing with the moon? What could we change to make it the same?
When we have written down observations and questions on our sheets of paper, we will then meet up with the other groups in the room and share what we have discovered and questions we still might have.
Hopefully this lesson plan will help the students learn a bit more about the moon, help me learn a bit more about students, and teach us all to work as a team to share observations and educated guesses about the moon.