![]() ![]() If the balloon is large enuff, the surface looks flat and the child says so. We ask the child to then describe what she sees to the class. We inflate the balloon and have each child, one by one, place her cheek against the balloon, closing the outer eye and looking with the inner eye out over the surface of the balloon. The demonstration gives young children an intuitive feeling for the shape of Earth. In the last year, we have developed and given classroom demonstrations to local first graders using a very large balloon and a toy ship. To attack this obstacle, we have to show children that something can look flat even when it obviously is not. What looks flat might be round the biggest obstacle to accepting a round Earth is that it indeed appears flat. ![]() The concept of a round Earth presents one of the earliest and most striking examples of this critical lesson in science. Such a struggle will inevitably be repeated in other science topics: The world is not always as it seems. For instance, 2nd grade teachers believed that 95% of their students knew Earth was round when less than 5% of them actually did.clearly, our children are struggling with a contradiction between what they are told about their world and what they see with their own eyes. The teachers greatly overestimated their students' knowledge. We asked 65 elementary and middle school teachers to predict how their students would draw the Earth. These findings run head on against teachers' and parents' perceptions of what their children have learned. Other draw Earth as a giant pancake or as a curved sky covering a flat ground. Most of the remaining fourth grader who say, "The Earth is a round ball," actually picture a flat part where people life in the interior of the ball. Studies done in the USA and Israel indicate that as late as the fourth grade almost half the children believe Earth is flat. If we expect young children to believe this story, we're wrong. For proof, look at the globe in the classroom or the photos of Earth from space. That flat, flat ground we walk, ride, and play on, stretching endless miles in perfect and reliable flatness, actually wraps around on itself to form a giant ball. One of the first scientific facts we announce to our children is that Earth is round. Piagetian ideas blossom in this interesting article the earth is round? who are you kidding?Īlan lightmand / philip sadler: s/c feb 88 We teach kids "stuff" that they really don't believe. ![]()
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