Middle School Inquiry Lab on the Lunar Cycle
In this lab students will build models of the moon to model and predict sequences in the lunar cycle.
Each inquiry lab will contain an essential question that will drive the lesson and make students think. For this lesson, the essential question is:
- How does the appearance of the moon change during one lunar cycle?
BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND MATERIALS LIST:
Students will begin the lab by reading the essential question and background information. This can be done individually, as lab groups, or as a whole class. If you consider lab groups, you also might include some type of whole class formative checks before digging into the lab.
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Materials List:
- moonset and moonrise chart
- colored pencils
PROCEDURE:
For this lab, students start off by answering a few pre-lab questions. Afterwards, students use a data sheet with information about the phases of the moon and the times the moon rises and sets during a calendar month so that they can create a moon phase calendar. The information given is dated Jan 31st – March 1st, 2018.
CONCLUSION
Students will go back to the essential question and write a CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) to conclude the lab. Once completed, students will reflect back on their learning by answering the following questions:
- Why does the moon appear to change shape?
- At approximately what time does a new moon rise and set?
- At approximately what time does a 1st quarter moon rise and set?
- At approximately what time does a 3rd/last quarter moon rise and set?
MODIFIED AND INDEPENDENT INQUIRY VERSIONS
All of the Kesler Science inquiry labs come with three different modification levels. Each lab is differentiated using the icons below.
STANDARDS ALIGNMENT
TEKS: 8.7B – Demonstrate and predict the sequence of events in the lunar cycle.
