|
St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School
Back to Values Project Home Page
Back to Lesson Plans Page
Values Project - Lesson Plan Title:
The Moon is made of Cheese
|
Subject:
Science |
Keywords:
Knowledge, Belief, Space
|
Resources:
"The moon is made of cheese" stimulus sheet.
Recording sheet. |
|
Year Group:
8 |
Values:
Truth, Trustworthiness |
Teaching and Learning Styles:
Group Discussion, Class Discussion,
|
|
Context in which the lesson is set |
During work on space and the Earth, and in particular after studying
the phases of the moon and lunar and solar eclipses |
|
What the lesson is about |
The purpose of the lesson is to use the context of space as a vehicle
for examining why we believe the things we do, and the reasons we might
trust certain sources of information as being authoritative e.g. our teachers,
parents, textbooks etc |
|
Expected outcomes |
Pupils will have had the opportunity to have questioned themselves and
each other about the reasons why they believe scientific ideas to be true
They will have become more aware of their own ability to think critically
rather then to accept what they are told without question |
|
Details of Teacher and Pupil Activities |
Each pupil or group of pupils is given a copy of the stimulus sheet, which
has on it some statements which are true, some which are blatantly untrue,
and some of which sound as if they could be true, but are not. This work
could be done individually, in pairs, or in small groups. They need to
decide which statements they think are true, and which they think are
false. Most importantly, they need to decide, for each statement, the
reasons why they think it is true or false. A table could be used to fill
in their ideas, like the one shown. Following on from this, the discussion
should be opened out to the whole class, in order to establish what kind
of evidence we use to decide whether something is true or not. What kind
of evidence can we trust? Who can we trust to tell the truth? Why do we
no longer believe some things we once believed, and we now believe things
we did not used to believe? |
|
Extension Work |
Having established the right to question the nature of belief, this theme
can easily be returned to in later lessons. This may be particularly important
when looking at the nature of experimental evidence during practical investigations |
|