Basic Productivity Tools (BPT)

Lesson Idea Name: Four Seasons Misconceptions

Content Area: Earth Science
Grade Level(s): 6
Content Standard Addressed: SES5a. Develop and use models to explain how latitudinal variations in solar
heating create differences in air pressure, global wind patterns, and ocean currents that redistribute heat
globally.

Technology Standard Addressed:

Knowledge Constructor 1.3a Students plan and employ effective research strategies to locate information and
other resources for their intellectual or creative pursuits.

Selected Technology Tool: Microsoft Forms

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy Level(s):

☐ Remembering ☒ Understanding ☒ Applying ☒ Analyzing ☐ Evaluating ☐ Creating

Levels of Technology Integration:

☐ Infusion Level: Students may work at a higher Bloom’s Level, but they do not have any “Voice or Choice”
during the activity and most of the decisions are made by the teacher.

☒ Integration Level: We would like to see ALL lessons/activities reach this level. The project is student-
driven. Students have “Voice and Choice” in the activities, selecting the topic of study and determining the
technology tool to demonstrate mastery of the standard. The teacher becomes more of a facilitator.

☐ Expansion Level: The projects created are shared outside of the classroom, publishing student work and
promoting authorship. This could be reached by showcasing the project on the school’s morning
newscast, posting the project to the classroom blog, or publishing via an outside source.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL):

A key feature of Universal Design for Learning is allowing students voice and choice in their learning. This
lesson, based heavily on Microsoft Forms, allows students control, or voice and choice, in their learning. The
students are fully in control of how they choose to organize their form. They are also in control of how they
organize their findings. In other words, students have control over how they engage with the inquiry activity.
This plan also allows a degree of teacher customizability to help target students with different learning needs
as well. For instance, teachers can guide above-level students through the process using basic “if, then”
statements in the results Excel sheet to sort open-ended verbal answers. On the other hand, at-level students
can opt to create simpler multiple-choice forms and use the resulting Excel spreadsheet to create graphs to
analyze.
Lesson idea implementation:
This lesson plan begins with an inquiry into common misconceptions about how Earth’s position and
orientation in the solar system work to create the seasons, followed by teacher-guided discussion on why
these misconceptions are incorrect and what the scientifically backed explanation for the changing seasons is.
This is lesson-plan is based on the idea that correcting mistakes creates a more robust and longer-lasting
understanding of concepts than simple explaining concepts. Students will be put into groups and directed by
the teacher to create a Form to gather 10-20 responses to ask friends, teachers, and family-members to
explain or answer what makes the seasons change. Students will be given minimal initial instruction on how
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 Basic Productivity Tools (BPT)
to structure their Forms, but teacher guidance will be available as students brainstorm in small groups.
Students will be given a week to create the Form, collect responses, research the question online, and analyze
the responses into one or two PowerPoint slides. All of these initial tasks will be performed mostly as
homework, with short 10-minute periods of class time provided for students to organize with their groups
with teacher input as needed. Teachers can assist in the use of the technology and

The conclusion of the assignment will be a teacher-mediated classroom discussion of what common answers
to their questionnaires were and why specific answers are not correct, and what the actual reason for the
changing of the seasons. The discussion will also cover student-researched answers with an emphasis on what
facts and sources were used and whether and why they can or cannot be considered trustworthy spurces.
Engaging with arguments about a phenomenon is a higher order level of thinking than remembering an
explanation provided. Students will then be asked to finish their PowerPoint slides with their final answer to
the question “Why do the seasons change?” for practice with PowerPoint. The teacher will assess and grade
these slides, as listening to multiple nearly identical presentations is not the best use of classroom. Students
will be assessed further on the material alongside other facets of the standard (angle of sunlight and the tilt of
Earth’s axis and the seasons, are only a small part of the standard) through a unit test.

Reflective Practice:
Lesson plans like these help to both teach content-specific standards as well as get students used to engaging
with technology and tools that they will use through the rest of their education, higher education, and
careers. This activity was designed as an introductory inquiry activity, but Forms can be used for similar
aspects of the content standard. Weather and climate are things with which all people interact, so fostering
discussions about the phenomena that cause them is a good jumping off point that engages students with the
lesson more than simply explaining climate phenomena in a straightforward teacher-presented lesson. As
mentioned earlier, Excel and PowerPoint work together with this lesson plan, and this type of lesson plan can
be extended to teach students new techniques in both tools. A similar lesson plan that involves sharing their
survey through social media could be used at a more advanced age where responsible social media use is
more appropriate, and students can be given the tools (basic Excel programming) to sort through a larger
number of longform answer responses.

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