Travis Hickox Portfolio 5: Content

I think by knowing my content well I can sort through the material and topics and teach what I
know are the fundamentals. For example, I had to teach a unit on space and the NCACS had focused
standards on gravity and how force is majorly influential when talking about space science. I found
gravity to be important in this unit but also a good launching point, no pun intended, to talk about orbit
and axis tilt. When we investigated how orbit worked, another force had to be at play, that force being
velocity. While learners at this level have been exposed to velocity by way of cars or other physical
concepts on earth, we were now able to relate velocity to objects in space and Newtons laws, which
were also previously covered. While the concept of balanced forces between gravitational pull and
velocity might be a bit of a reach at this level when explaining orbit, at the least it’s good to have them
exposed to it and have some differentiation by challenging high level learners with this concept.
Gravitational pull in relation to distance and mass was stressed to explain why the moon orbits the Earth
instead of the sun. From there we were able to talk about the lunar phases. As an educator it is
important to have a good spatial understanding of the sun-earth-moon, as well as what effects the force
of gravity and how velocity plays into it. There are a lot of moving things in a space unit and it is good to
know how they all dynamically relate or it’s difficult to teach classes with the big picture in mind.

Axis tilt was a great opener to talk about seasons on earth. Background knowledge was used to
talk about seasons because everyone, at least in Reno, has experienced them. I did a project examining
seasonal daylight hour changes at different latitudes of the earth and I feel it helped learners see the
difference at real places, making it more relatable. If time allowed this could have been expanded into
seasonal temperature changes and social reasons for population distributions. This is another good
example into why it is important to know your subject matter well and be able to relate it to other
aspects of science or life in general. To ensure that learners have achieved mastery in the understanding
of seasons, they were required to give a presentation of their latitude. This allowed them to be resident
experts of their area and how the earth’s axis affects them. In turn this provided an opportunity for
learners at other latitudes to reflect of similarities and differences from their own. Formative and
summative assessments were used to check mastery as well. All these aspects were necessary in
implementing a strong lesson.