Temperature Drop Pre-Eclipse

I wanted to start the day with a Notice/Wonder introduction. So I asked students to discuss what they think would happen during the eclipse. Students shared somethings they picked up in other classes about nocturnal animals becoming away, lightning bugs might show up, and that we might be able to see stars.

My next question focused particularlly on the temperature and asked what did they think the temperature would do during the eclipse? Students discussed in groups some of my favorites:

"How close would it be to a really cloudy day?"

"Would the temperature drop more than ten degrees?"

"Would the street lights come on outside of school?"

I gave them a piece of graph paper and asked them to put temperature on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. I told them they could use their iPads and any resources they needed to answer the question and discuss in their groups. They had ten minutes to come up with a graph and post it on the wall.

Then I showed them this graphic from the 2001 eclipse in Africa.


I asked them how it would be different, how it would be the same as the eclipse on Monday. I described the activity we were going to be doing Monday and the layout of the day.

Since some of the students had questions about the eclipse, we watched this 5 minute really well done video by Vox.

Then we went outside and tried on a pair of solar glasses to see how they fit and what the sun looks like. Some students even got their camera's on their phone to take a very blurry picture.