Point of View

Our students at Chrysalis are learning astronomy. Lots of the conceptual breakthroughs in the early history of astronomy depended on changing one’s point of view. For example, realizing that the Earth was rotating rather than the stars revolving around required shifting your point of view from the surface of the Earth to an explanation that is best visualized from somewhere out in space looking back at a spinning Earth. Or understanding why Mercury and Venus are never seen in the middle of the night requires a point of view looking “down” on the solar system’s orbital plane. So one of the meta-skills of astronomy that needs to be taught is changing one’s point of view. Therefore I came up with the following activity that the kids really enjoyed.

The class sits in a large circle. In the middle of the circle are three balls of different color and size. Each student has paper and crayons. On the back of the paper, they write their names. Then each student draws the balls as they appear from that student’s point of view. Then I collect the papers, shuffle them and pass them around again. The challenge is to figure out who drew the picture you now have. What position would have this point of view? Once you’ve decided, you turn the paper over, look at the name, and see how close you got. Then I collect the papers again, shuffle them, and repeat.