A teacher sent this question in:
How do I help students to remember the phases of the moon, particularly waxing vs waning?
It’s a quirk of the human brain that, if you aim for pure memorization, you won’t get anywhere. But, when you get people thinking about the content, all of the sudden memorization becomes easy.
When you aim for thinking, you get remember for free.
Let’s Think!
So, how do we get students to think about the phases of the moon? As always, I’m going to aim for Analyze on Bloom’s Taxonomy. That opens up Evaluate and will get me out of the doldrums of Remember and Understand.
So let’s compare and contrast Waxing vs Waning. But we’re not just going to reach for a Venn Diagram! No, way! That would put everyone to sleep. I want to find the controversy. So, we’ll build “compare / contrast” around an argument between Waxing and Waning.
What would these two seemingly-similar phases disagree about? Perhaps Waxing emphasizes growth and new beginnings, whereas Waning is all about rest and recovery. There is an increase in light versus a decrease.
I’m going to build on this:
- How are waxing and waning different?
- Imagine the two phases meet each other. Write conversation in which they disagree with each other.
But let’s not stop there. Imagine The Full Moon appears. He wants the two phases to become friends.
- What similarities do waxing and waning have?
- Revise your conversation so that the two phases come to an agreement.
Want to put a little cherry on top? Imagine that New Moon shows up and Full Moon gets irritated. Now we can repeat for those two phases. How can we reconcile their obvious differences?
The Product
Now, this conversation can become anything. A skit, a children’s book, a stop-motion animation, a folk song? See, the product is just a way to show off the thinking. And then, I love doing a gallery walk. Students would give out awards to outstanding ideas. (See how we’re going back to Evaluate on Bloom’s?)
Now, this task has room for differentiation. It’s built-in! You’re going to clearly see a difference in thinking from your most advanced thinkers and your perfectly-on-grade-level minds.
Consider what Jill Genius and Carl Creative can come up with using this task compared to: “Make a Venn Diagram of waxing vs waning.”
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