Primary Science Worries

[Sunscorch]

I've been browsing through a few old threads on these boards, and I came across something a little worrying. To me, at least.

This happened in an ancient thread, by internet standards, which is why I've not revived the original post. Someone was talking about correcting a teacher's spelling, and how to go about it sensitively. One poster brought up a tangentially related point about correcting a teacher's science knowledge in class. They seemed horrified by the attitude, although I believe correcting an egregious error such as the one they mentioned must be done immediately, lest misconceptions take root.

My question is this:
Can you, as a teacher or parent, explain how the cause of seasons on Earth?
And, as an adult in a classroom, would you correct a teacher if you saw them teaching a class of thrity young minds a completely worthless misrepresentation of that?

The simple answer is the movement of the Earth around the sun ...because of the way the Earth is tilted on it's axis it means that as it orbits it leans towards or away from the sun so it is warmer in the summer than in the winter.

I would try to do it sensitively but if that wasn't an option I would wait until they were alone to say something and let them tell the class.

I think my proofreading needs work.

Thanks for your reply, mrz ^^

It's a tricky one isn't it. One of my DC, aged 6, loudly heckled a year 4 assembly which featured a particularly egregious popular scientific misconception, and I was hard pressed to explain to them why this was bad form.

If pressed on this particular subject I, like mrz, would refer to the tilt of the earth and the angle at which the light falls but would then admit to an imperfect understanding and suggest we hit the Internet together to look for a good explanation.

www.virneth.co.uk/Science/eM004.php

www.hyperstaffs.info/work/science/steele/html/main.html

Do they need to know how seasons come about in primary school?

Yes, I could explain, and would do so sensitively to protect a teacher, but I would not volunteer the info unless it was required.

I think it is the bane of many senior school science teachers' lives that they have to correct misconceptions instilled in primary school as well as those misconceptions that are natural.

This is one of the reasons my children go to a school where they get specialist science teaching from Y4.

yes I can. But then I am science graduate who has taught secondary science for many years.

We teach seasons in year 7 and many children find it a difficult concept grasp then.

For instance, they are keen to jump to the idea that the tilt of the Earth brings us nearer to the sun in summer, hence its warmer. Its hard to get them to the point of understanding that it is to do with the angle the sun's rays strike the earth.

I would be surprised that this would be something other than level 5 pupils would understand at primary.

I think it is the bane of many senior school science teachers' lives that they have to correct misconceptions instilled in primary school as well as those misconceptions that are natural.

to be honest, I have never felt this at all. I was always surprised at how much science they had done.

I find it hard to work out the difference between 'natural' misconceptions and those you believe to have been instilled.

I think if a young child asks then as a teacher you need to answer but the answer needs to be tailored to the child's age and understanding.

and if you don't know admit it and look for the answer together and not just on google

They are not going to understand the science behind the seasons unless they have a good understanding of division.

< As there are suitably qualified people here, coukd I hijack briefly to ask a question which stumped me (I think I said we'd look it up when we got home, never did, and this thread has just reminded me): "As the top of mountains are nearer the sun, which is the source of heat, how come they stay colder and snowy?" >

So would you suggest I tell 4 year olds to wait until their maths is better DavidaCottonmouth?

You can give them knowledge before understanding.

But you are not going to be able to explain to a four-year old. But you can give them factoids.

It's got something to do with air pressure Edith

IME you can teach a six year old accurate scientific facts, and think 'ah, they've got it!', but be quite, quite wrong.....

We recently discussed penguins and, by fair means and foul (fowl?!), managed to convince the children (haha) that penguins are, in fact, birds, and therefore have feathers. (The logic took a bit of a long time to grasp, but we got there....) Fast forward two days when the children had a canine visitor. The children were sitting quietly on the floor - children staring at dog, dog staring at children - when one child suddenly pipes up, 'Oo, hasn't he got lovely feathers!' Noooooooooo!

The Earth absorbs solar radiation and re-radiates it. This energy is absorbed by the atmosphere and some of it is radiated back into space. There is not as much atmosphere higher up, so less energy is absorbed.

The difference between the distance of the valley to the sun and the top of the mountain to the sun is really nothing in the big scale of things. So how close the sun is is irrelevent.

mrz is correct, it is to do with the relationship between air pressure and temerature. If all of the radiated heat reaches the Earth's surface, it hits the ground and heats it up. However, air is a very poor conductor of heat, and the less air particles there are, the less ability there is to pass the heat and upwards. So it gets colder the further away from the ground you get and the fewer particles there are around.

mrz is, of course, correct, you can't fob kids off by telling them to wait until their maths is better. What rot!

Thanks everyone! I had a feeling that the distance being a drop in the ocean in solar gems might be part of the answer, but woefully under informed on the rest.

I agree BTW (from a lay point of view) that you should always aim to give the fullest factual answer you can. If the detail is too much, at least you can say "it's all to do with ". And I've found, when a DC is following something that has interested them, they absorb even detailed knowledge surprisingly well. And I do always like to give them the chance to surprise me like that!

Interesting thing to note; a "factoid" is not, as commonly thought, a little fact, but actually "An assumption or speculation that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact".

So I wouldn't recommend telling your pupils any factoids to explain science ^^

(Well, language is mutable and it kind of does mean "a little fact" nowadays, so in a sense it's an example of itself.)

Can you, as a teacher or parent, explain how the cause of seasons on Earth?

Yes, I have a degree in geography :).

As the top of mountains are nearer the sun, which is the source of heat, how come they stay colder and snowy?

This flummoxed me , but the 'Net is saying it has to do with the difference in optimal local surface area that sun strikes.

Also, mountain being taller doesn't matter. The sun is 93 million miles away, an extra few miles closer doesn't really make that much difference.

at sunscorch...i like that a lot!

What is a small fact then? factette? factiolous? factino?

Can a fact actually be described as big or small? Surely a fact is a fact and has no size.

Factini?
I don't know =P

Incorrect teaching of science is a huge bugbear of mine, and as I am a physicist, and dh is a geochemist, our 5 year old has a very good understanding of the science behind things, and we have a lot of discussions about 'things lots of people think is true but isn't'. He has been known to correct his teacher, and on a couple of occasions she has come to ask me about something he has been telling her about as she didn't kow.

In my dd's story book (one she got from school) it said that plants get their food from the soil. I was so annoyed and I really had to stop myself from writing a comment in my dd's communication book.