Rotation Activity Goals and National Teaching Standards

Please note that The NSE Standards is a very thorough document and is difficult to navigate since it was written for a variety of audiences and it not obvious from the table of contents exactly which sections are intended for teachers' use in the classroom. To save time when referencing the standards, you may want to skip directly to the information pertaining to the Content Standards for grades 5-8, which begins on page 143.

• Content Standard A: Science as Inquiry

  This standard is absolutely central to the solar rotation investigation. Goal 1 is to help students develop several fundamental abilities that support the ability to perform Science as Inquiry as they:

  • Design and conduct a scientific investigation,
  • Use appropriate tools and techniques to gather, analyze, and interpret data,
  • Think critically and logically to make the relationships between evidence and explanations,
  • Communicate scientific procedures and explanations, and
  • Use Mathematics in all aspects of scientific inquiry.

  For more detail on any of these points, see Content Standard A in the NSE Standards .

• Content Standard D: Earth and Space Science

  Although the Sun is the object of study for this activity, the inquiry does not directly address the Earth and Space Science Standard. However, students will be exposed to a surprising example of the kind of regular, periodic motion that is ubiquitous among celestial bodies. Thus, the activity can serve as both a segue and an illustration for a discussion of the periodic motions in the solar system that are central to the Earth and Space Science Standard. Such a discussion might begin with the question, "Does it strike anyone as odd that everything in space seems to be rotating about an axis and/or orbiting about something else?"

• Content Standard G: History and Nature of Science

  A fundamental tenet of this standard is the understanding of The Nature of Science , which is efficiently conveyed by the fact that the data the students have at their disposal (not to mention the strategies they will develop to interpret the data) are basically the same as that used by the scientists who determined the solar rotational period to begin with (Galileo was the first). So as the students work through the activity, they are actually recreating a part of scientific history!

  Goal 2 is that students will gain improved perspective on the Nature of Science. To this end, students will see first-hand a key aspect of the Nature of Science.

  It is part of scientific inquiry to evaluate the results of scientific investigations, experiments, observations, theoretical models, and the explanations proposed by other scientists. Evaluation includes reviewing the experimental procedures, examining the evidence, identifying faulty reasoning, ...

  --NSE Standards, 1996

While The NCTM Standards is as thorough a document as the NSE Standards, it was written primarily for teachers, and you will have no trouble navigating by its transparent table of contents.

• Number and Operation

  A key to this standard is the understanding of the meanings of operations and how they relate to one another. At some point in this activity, most students will have to confront a situation such as this: If a spot moves 3/4 of an inch in a day, and must traverse 20 inches for the sun to complete a rotation, how long will one rotation take? The student will have to think carefully about the meaning of arithmetic operations to realize that the required number of days is just the number of times 3/4 goes into 20, or 20 divided by 3/4.

• Geometry

  Geometry Standard principles lie at the core of the solar rotation investigation. Goal 3 is to improve students' command of practical geometry skills. As urged by the NCTM, students will:

  • Analyze Characteristics and properties of two- and three-dimensional geometric shapes and develop mathematical arguments about geometric relationships;
  • Use visualization, spatial reasoning, and geometric reasoning to solve problems.

• Problem Solving

  In this standard, the NCTM calls on instructional programs to (among other things) "enable students to apply and adapt a variety of appropriate strategies to solve problems." Students will expand this skill as they develop their methods and discuss these methods and others with the rest of the class.

• Connections

  Here, a basic skill for students is to be able to "recognize and apply mathematics in contexts outside of mathematics," which is central to this project.