Mommy Comet is a set of short stories that like a train transport children in the landscape of the Solar System from the Earth to the Oort cloud. The stories form the framework of our approach to mechanics in primary school with the goal of introducing children to the notion of trajectory and the motion of free falling objects in the general contest of astronomy. The key is a unified and simplified, but not trivial, sketch of all celestial motions: each body is falling with an elliptical path towards another body. In this paper we report the results of a small experimentation with two groups, of about fifty primary school children each, aged six and ten. The results obtained clearly indicates the utility of the approach and point out different kind of conceptualization between the first and the fifth grade students: the former are in general more accurate in their pictorial and figurative drawings while the latter are less accurate, but more abstract and more dynamic in their descriptions.
Mommy Comet brings children to discover the solar system / M. Giliberti, S. Barbieri - In: Physics alive : proceedings : GIREP-EPEC conference 2011, August 1-5, Jyväskylä, Finland / [a cura di] A. Lindell, A. Kähkönen, J. Viiri. - Jyväskylä : University of Jyväskylä, 2012. - ISBN 978-951-39-4801-6. - pp. 25-30 (( convegno Physics alive : GIREP-EPEC conference tenutosi a Jyväskylä (Finland) nel 2011.
Mommy Comet brings children to discover the solar system
M. Giliberti;
2012
Abstract
Mommy Comet is a set of short stories that like a train transport children in the landscape of the Solar System from the Earth to the Oort cloud. The stories form the framework of our approach to mechanics in primary school with the goal of introducing children to the notion of trajectory and the motion of free falling objects in the general contest of astronomy. The key is a unified and simplified, but not trivial, sketch of all celestial motions: each body is falling with an elliptical path towards another body. In this paper we report the results of a small experimentation with two groups, of about fifty primary school children each, aged six and ten. The results obtained clearly indicates the utility of the approach and point out different kind of conceptualization between the first and the fifth grade students: the former are in general more accurate in their pictorial and figurative drawings while the latter are less accurate, but more abstract and more dynamic in their descriptions.
Pubblicazioni consigliate
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
