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Learn how student preconceptions influence understanding in plate tectonics. Explore a sample unit on the Theory of Plate Tectonics with essential questions and preconception survey results included.
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Tapping into Student Preconceptions • Students start any unit of study with pre-existing ideas or models. • By knowing students’ prior ideas, the teacher can design learning experiences to target incorrect models and replace them with correct ones.
Why are preconceptions important to understanding? • Some student preconceptions can prevent the acceptance of the correct scientific model. • Teaching without reflection on student prior knowledge can enhance student misconceptions.
An ESBD Sample UnitScientific Revolution: The Theory of Plate Tectonics
Unit Overview • Looking at plate tectonics through a historical and scientific lens. • Students construct their own understanding by collecting evidence, modeling true scientific process.
Enduring Understandings • The theory of plate tectonics was once a new idea; it is now widely accepted by most scientists because of the evidence that has been collected which supports it. • Continents are part of the earth’s plates; when the plates are moved the continents also move. • The intense heat of the earth’s core is responsible for the movement of the tectonic plates. • Over millions of years the continuous movement of the Earth causes the continents (landmasses) to merge and divide repeatedly.
Essential Questions • How did the theory of plate tectonics evolve? • What is the mechanism that drives the movement of the continents? What is its fuel? • What allows the continents to move? • What evidence supports the theory of plate tectonics? • Why did competent scientists reject the idea of continental drift? • Why is this theory a revolution?
Preconception Survey • If you were looking down on the earth from space 200 million years ago what would it look like? • What does the ocean floor between North America and Europe look like? • Describe what is under the continents. • Describe what happens to the ocean floor when the continents move during continental drift. • What allows the continents to move? • Where does the energy needed to move the continents come from? Explain how this energy moves the continents.
What does the ocean floor between North America and Europe look like ? • Student ideas about the ocean floor fall into several different categories. • The replacement of these ideas with the actual ocean floor topography is an important step in their understanding of seafloor spreading.
Describe what is under the continents. • Students often believe that the continents are floating on the surface of the ocean and move like floating rafts.
What allows the continents to move? • Student easily integrate that the plates allow the continents to move but their model is often very different from the actual model.
Describe what happens to the ocean floor when the continents move. • Student models showed the stretching and pushing together of the ocean floor when continents move.
Where does the energy needed to move the continents come from? • Student understanding of this concept varies from gravity to the heat of the sun. • More often though, students have used the heat of the interior of the earth but have incorrect ideas about how the heat of the earth moves the earth’s crust.
Confronting Student models and replacing Misunderstandings • Analysis of the origin of student ideas is key for students to replace their misunderstandings.
