For as long as humans have walked the Earth, we have been looking up into the sky and asking questions. In this lesson, students will activate their innate sense of wonder and curiosity by reflecting on objects moving in the sky.

Phase 1

“Activating Wonder” (w/ Video + Teacher Script)

The goal of this “wondering activity” is to have students develop their own questions and identify the kind of questions they formulated (scientific or philosophical).

Note: This lesson can be scaffolded in a variety of ways, depending on the age and academic level of your students. Below is an offering for a gradual scaffolding where the whole class collaborates on the first two objects (sun and moon), students work in groups for the third object (stars), and independently for the final object (planets). Facilitate and scaffold in a way that is engaging and accessible to your students.

• Play this video of the movements of the sky. Read the script over the video, or pause to read for each section. (Reading the script, or some version of it, will greatly assist the students in having something concrete to ask questions about.)
• Pause reading after each object (paragraph) and encourage the students to wonder and ask questions about the celestial object.
• For the Sun and Moon, facilitate wondering together (as a class)
  1. Give students some silent thinking time about what questions they have after focusing on the sun. Prompt students to raise their hands to share their questions. You can track these on the board.
  2. Reflect on the kinds of questions the students asked. With the students’ help, identify/ label the different kinds of questions on the board.
     1. Are they scientific questions? (S)
        1. Scientific questions are ones about facts of how things work or are.
        2. Ex: “How hot is the surface of the sun?”
     2. Are they philosophical questions? (P)
        1. Philosophical questions are big questions that might not just have one right answer to them that make us think differently about a topic. They might prompt us to make a reasoned argument, or think imaginatively about some topic.
        2. Ex: “Is the moon the same thing from day to day?”; “What if the moon suddenly disappeared?”
     3. Note: some questions might fit into more than one category. You can label these with more than one tag.
• For the Stars, encourage students to work in groups to write down their wonderings. Then, prompt the groups to identify which kinds of questions they came up with. Encourage groups to have examples of all three kinds.
• Students can either sort their questions into a t-chart, or can label their questions with an “S” or “P”.
• For the Planets, students independently come up with 1-2 questions for each sentence kind. After some time, you can have students share their favorite question with the class.

**If your students need the additional scaffolding, here are some sentence starters for each type of question:

• Scientific
  • How does…?
  • What causes…?
  • Why does… happen?
• Philosophical
  • Is it possible that…?
  • Can we ever really know…?
  • What does it mean when…?
  • How do we know if…?
  • What if…?
  • What would happen if…?

Phase 2

Philosophical Inquiry

• During the “Activating Wonder” activity, identify 3-5 philosophical questions that are particularly interesting or the students seemed especially excited about.
• Make sure that these questions are ones that can have more than one answer to them. This will enable a much more lively discussion!

• Have students vote on which question they would like to talk about as a class.
• Facilitate a dialogue about this question, encouraging students to respectfully engage with one another.
• Once discussion has fizzled, you can repeat with another popular question.

If you would like, you can also pull from these questions:

• Is the sky always the same, or is it always changing?
• Is the sky a part of the Earth? Is the Earth a part of the sky?
• Why do humans look up at the sky and wonder? What has this taught us?

Community Close-Out

• To close this lesson, have students think about one question from the “Activating Wonder” activity or one point from the “Philosophical Inquiry” that someone else said that made you think in a new or surprising way.
• Have students share who said what that expanded their thinking. This can be done orally to the whole class or by having students write private notes to each other.
• This closing allows students to reflect on the lesson and builds community by emphasizing the value others can have in changing the way we think.