Sun Seekers of Turtle Island
Task
Considering the daily patterns of the sun in a time before clocks and calendars, students apply their understanding to reason about how people of 1000 CE may have tracked the sun’s movements. This activity (for middle school students and up) builds on students’ understanding of 5-ESS1-2 in which they explain patterns of daily changes in length and direction of shadows, patterns of day and night, and seasonal change. It extends to the MS standard, MS-ESS1-1, in which they consider how to model these cyclic patterns and relate them to the motions of the Earth-sun system. Students will: Look at the variability of time for three events: sunrise, solar noon, and sunset. Think about how predictability relates to variability. Use their reasoning to explain differences in day lengths during a year. Apply their understanding of the sun’s movement to explain how shadows change. Other information for teachers: Students will need to apply their own experiences and understanding of seasons to answer the questions through this different lens. Native tribes referenced are based on the maps on https://native-land.ca/. Teaching Slides: Optional teaching slides are provided for your convenience. !![iframe]480x299
There is evidence that civilizations kept track of the sun’s movement across the sky in many different ways. How they tracked the sun may have depended on their tools and what points of reference (e.g. mountains, rocks, trees) surrounded them in their natural environment. The image on the left shows a small, spiral petroglyph in Petrified Forest National Park. It was used to mark the summer solstice. On the summer solstice, light shines through a crack in the rocks and onto the center of the spiral. [--- Summer Solstice: The longest day of the year. ---] {alert-vocabulary} Click next to continue.
Topics and standards: Science, Earth Science, MS-ESS1-1, Earth in Space, Orbital Patterns, Grades 6-8, Identify-Interpret Patterns, Guided, ELD-Support, 3.3.6-8.A