Apr 232009
This is a video in which a group of elementary school students are having a discussion about the earth and the ferris wheel.
“…Many educators have had reservations about calling students’ non-canonical beliefs “misconceptions.” (3) They point out that students’ conceptions usually have a basis in everyday experience and that they often reflect imaginative attempts to make sense of what they have observed and been taught. For instance, a group of Grade 5 students was wrestling with the problem of how the world could be round, yet people in Australia are not upside down. One student came up with the following ingenious theory: The world is like a ferris wheel, which is round and which turns, but the people on it are always right side up…”