This is the new updated edition of the first book in the bestselling Uncovering Student Ideas in Science series. Like the first edition of volume 1, this book helps pinpoint what your students know (or think they know) so you can monitor their learning and adjust your teaching accordingly. Loaded with classroom-friendly features you can use immediately, the book includes 25 “probes”—brief, easily administered formative assessments designed to understand your students’ thinking about 60 core science concepts.

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The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about stars. The probe is designed to examine students’ ideas about the location of stars in the daytime.

Friendly Talk

stars

The best response is Shelley’s: The stars are still in the sky above us, but we cannot see them. The reason we see stars at night is because our location on Earth is turned away from the Sun, blocking its light so that the evening sky is dark. During the day, the bright light from our Sun, our closest star, illuminates the sky overhead and prevents our eyes from seeing the fainter light from distant stars. We can only see them in the darkness of the night sky. This also explains why we only see some stars as night falls. The stars that appear brightest to us become visible first and gradually other stars appear as the night sky darkens.

The location of the stars and the patterns they make in our sky do not change. In the daytime, they are still in the overhead sky in the same pattern as we would see them if it were night. However, their positions in the overhead sky change because of the daily rotation of Earth, which makes it appear as if the stars and their patterns are moving across the sky from east to west. As Earth revolves around the Sun over the course of a year, different star patterns appear at night as we look in the direction away from the Sun and others become invisible as they appear in the direction of the Sun. This is similar to riding a merry-go-round as we face out to see our parents or friends who are standing around and watching us. This explains why we see different stars at different seasons. Without Earth’s revolution, a given star or star pattern would appear to rise at the same time each day; however, because of Earth’s revolution they appear to rise about four minutes earlier each day. There are some star patterns that we can see throughout the year because they are near the Pole Star (Polaris). These stars never set and are called circumpolar stars.

Besides the fixed stars and the patterns they make, there are a few bright lights in the sky that change their positions with respect to the fixed star patterns. These are the planets. The word planet is derived from the Greek word planetes, which means “wanderers.” The brightest of these planets (much brighter than any of the fixed stars) is Venus, which may appear as a very bright light a few hours before sunrise or a few hours after sunset. Rivaling Venus in brightness is the planet Jupiter, while the planet Saturn and the red-colored planet Mars are as bright as the brightest stars. The much fainter planet Mercury can only be seen a few days of the year, either directly after sunset or directly before sunrise.

Elementary Students

In the elementary school grades, students make observations of the day and night sky and question where some objects, like the Moon and stars, go during the daytime. This is the time to help students connect their observations of light to why we see stars at night and not during the day. At this level, students investigate the patterns of stars and observe that, although star pattern positions relative to Earth may change in the sky over the seasons, the patterns of stars remain the same. Upper elementary students can also observe how the position of planets, including Earth, changes in relation to the pattern of stars.

Middle School Students

In middle school, students’ understanding of stars can include the vast distances between Earth and the stars and galaxies and how we can see many more stars in the sky with the use of a telescope. At this level, students should be able to explain how the position of the stars changes as Earth rotates and seasons change during Earth’s revolution around the Sun.

High School Students

At this level, students learn more complex ideas related to stars, such as evolution, composition, and behavior. However, be aware that some students may retain earlier developed misconceptions about stars.

This probe is best used at the elementary school level to determine students’ misconceptions about stars before instruction. However, it is useful in finding out if middle school and high school students have retained the misconception about where stars are located in the daytime.

• Young children’s ideas about the stars may be related to their ideas about the shape of Earth and day and night. Some younger students conceptualize a flat Earth, with the Sun above us and stars below in the daytime and the opposite at night. Even students who have a concept of a spherical Earth may still think in terms of above and below rather than being surrounded by sky (Driver et al. 1994).
• Agan (2004) points out that little astronomy education research has been done around students’ ideas related to stars and galaxies. This probe is useful in generating teacher research regarding K–8 students’ ideas about the location of stars. Field-test results from this probe show that a significant number of elementary school students in grades 1–4 have alternative ideas about where stars are located during the day that appear to be connected to their understanding of the position of Earth in relation to other objects as it completes its daily rotation. These alternative ideas appear to decrease between grades 3–4.
• Field-test results of this probe indicate that the most commonly chosen distracter at the early elementary school level is the idea that the stars are beneath us during the daytime. Students describe how the stars “set” by going “down” beneath Earth during the daytime in much the same way they believe the Sun sets in the evening by going down beneath Earth. An increasing number of upper elementary school students and middle school students select the distracter that the stars are on the opposite side of Earth during the daytime. They use reasoning similar to their ideas about the day-night cycle—that the light from the stars is not visible in the daytime because the stars are on the opposite side of Earth where it is night.

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 1993. Benchmarks for science literacy. New York: Oxford University Press.

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 2001. Atlas of science literacy. Vol. 2, “stars,” 46–47. Washington, DC: AAAS.

Driver, R., A. Squires, P. Rushworth, and V. Wood- Robinson. 1994. Making sense of secondary science: Research into children’s ideas. London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

Keeley, P. 2005. Science curriculum topic study: Bridging the gap between standards and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

National Research Council (NRC). 1996. National science education standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Riddle, B. 2006. Scope on the skies: Location, location, location. Science Scope (Jan.): 60–62.

• When teaching elementary students about the day-night cycle, the emphasis is usually on why we see the Sun during the day and not at night. Be aware that developing the idea that the Sun is facing away from Earth during nighttime might lead to the opposite conception that the stars are facing away from Earth in the daytime.
• Be aware that the use of common words and phrases like sundown and the sun sets might imply to younger students that the Sun goes beneath Earth at night and the stars come up. Conversely, children might think that when the Sun “rises,” the stars go back down beneath Earth, like the Sun does during the night.
• Use models to illustrate how the pattern of stars during an evening stays the same but their location overhead, relative to where you are viewing them as Earth rotates during a 24-hour period, changes.
• The model described above can be combined with a demonstration of how the light from a flashlight seen during the day (simulated in a well-lit room) is much harder to see than the light from the same flashlight at night (lights off in the room). Connect this to not being able to see the stars in the daytime even though they are emitting light to the brightness of the light from the Sun.