Using Models To Teach Science

Using models to teach science concepts helps students to understand and “experience” the big idea.  With technology changing daily, the opportunities to use computer models are endless.  In addition, the use of physical models allows the students to see science in action.  For my lesson on Earth’s movement, I chose to use a physical model to show the relationship between the Earth and Sun.  Demonstrating this relationship allows students to understand the cause of our days/nights, seasons and years.  For this activity, I used a light source in the middle of the room (lamp) to represent the sun and a globe representing Earth.  After turning all of the lights off in the room, except for the sun, students held the globe and demonstrated the rotation and revolution.  Students were able to see how days and nights happened as well as seasons and years.  One way that this lesson could be made more complex and higher order would be to give students a location, time of year and time of day to demonstrate.  This lesson was very successful in that students enjoyed it very much and were able to understand the concept.  The only problem I ran into was the amount of students.  Because it is summer, I did not have access to a class, so I was forced to use my own children and the other neighborhood children to teach.  This was not ideal, but went as well as can be expected.  It was very clear that seeing this concept helped the kids to gain a better understanding.