This iMovie was made by Shannon McDermott as she tried to address the misconceptions associated with hot air balloons. Shannon performed clinical interviews to assess students prior knowledge and prepared a series of lessons children's various preconceptions associated with rising hot air balloons. This is not a trivial problem for a Kindergarten teacher to attempt. Rather, it requires a substantial amount of teacher knowledge in the areas of children's backgrounds, developmental appropriateness, pedagogical and content knowledge. Some students thought that fire made it rise while others had various ways of explaining the event. Shannon needed to directly address each of these viewpoints as she established her problem, provide sufficient evidence for the scientific explanation, and scaffold tasks and questions for students so that they could use the concept. Before she could provide all of this to students in her first science lesson, Shannon had to herself come to a deeper understanding of density, expansion of heated gases, and convection.
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For more information, please contact Randy Yerrick at ryerrick@mail.sdsu.edu