The Shadow Knows

FOCUS POINTS, readers.

• The sun shone today, right during science when we needed it to.
• We are TRYING to learn about the sun, moon and earth.
• Darn hard to track shadows when there's NO SUN.
• (Speaking of the sun, isn't there some aphorism about no light without its shadow? Or something?
• Because dang. What a huge difference it makes in my attitude to have a little sunshine.)
• Anyway, if you JUST LISTEN to kids, turns out that they really do need the chance to construct their own knowledge. How many times do you think fifth graders have heard about what makes a year, a day, the phases of the moon, a month...? Pretty much every year, you say? Think they understand? Not so, readers.
• My students, and they're fifth graders, readers, are prepared to say that the sun and moon are pretty much alike,
  
• and we have day and night because Earth travels in a circle around the sun,
• Oh, and also, we could continue to track shadows from the sun even at night.
• And the way sundials work is that the shadows go all the way around in a circle just like on a clock.
• They need me, people. And they need to be crawling around on the pavement outside, tracing shadows from the tether ball pole every ten minutes.
• Yep. I touch the future. I teach.