This chapter will provide you with ideas for creating or improving your earth and space science lesson plans. The lessons include topical videos.
University of the Pacific
Gladys Benerd School of Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Unit Lesson Plan– ShortVersion
Lesson 3 - Sun
EssentialQuestion/Central Focus: What is the relationship between the Sun, Earth, andMoon, and what are their positions in the Solar System?
Lesson Alignment: Thislesson will give the students an introduction of the Sun, it’s location withinthe Solar System, and how it changes position during the day. This lesson willalign with the fieldtrip to the planetarium because the students will learn about the Sun and why it's position changes throughout the day. So this will be a good review for the students. Regarding lesson 2, the students will understand and connecthow the Moon revolves around the Earth, the Earth and Moon then revolves aroundthe Sun.
CA ContentStandard(s):
Third Grade Earth Sciences: 4e. Students know the positionof the Sun in the sky changes during the course of the day.
Third Grade Mathematics: Number Sense: 2.0: Studentscalculate and solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication,and division.
ThirdGrade Mathematics: Number Sense: 1.4 Round off numbers to 10,000 to the nearestten, hundred, and thousand.
Objectives:
·ContentObjective(s):
oStudentswill be able to locate the position of the Sun in the Solar System.
oStudentswill be able to describe how the Sun changes its position in the sky as the daypasses.
oStudentswill be able to calculate how many times bigger an item is using multiplicationand/or division.
·AcademicLanguage Objective:Third Grade:Listening and Speaking: 1.1: Retell, paraphrase, and explain what has been saidby a speaker.
·Key Vocabulary/Concepts:
Sun: the starthatisthecentralbodyofthesolar system, aroundwhichtheplanetsrevolve.
oHook: Studentswill draw a picture of the sunset and sunrise. What is the difference?
§Looking outside the window, ask the studentswhat they see in the sky. Focus on the Sun. Ask students their knowledge of theSun.
oLearningTasks:
§Teacher will question students what they see inthe sky.
·Answer should be around the range of Sun, stars,clouds…
§Teacher asks students about their knowledge ofthe Sun, what it looks like, what color is it, how hot they think the Sun is.(Information can also be found in The Sunby Robin Kerrod)
·THROUGH
oLearningTasks:
§Students will learn that the Sun is in thecenter of the Solar System and planets like Earth revolves around the Sun.
·The Sun is in the center of the Solar System.
·Picture representation of the solar systemshown.
§The Sun is a star not a planet. The same starswe see in the night sky.
·While we may think that the Sun is a planet, butactually, the Sun is a star, among millions of other stars. The other stars intheir galaxies also have planets which revolves around their central star, justlike our planets revolves around the Sun.
§Ask the students to describe how the Sun lookslike, then show a photograph of the Sun. (What geometric shape can represent theSun?)
·How big do you think the Sun is? Show photocomparison of the Sun and Earth. (http://www.weirdwarp.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/earth_planets_size_comparison.jpg)
oEarth: OurPlanet in Space by Seymour Simon will give a comparison of how big the Sunis in comparison to Earth.
§Math Activity 1: I will have two spheres indifferent sizes. One of the spheres would be X big and the other sphere wouldbe Y big. The students will use division to find out how much bigger is Sphere1 bigger than Sphere 2. The students will then to create on a piece of paper,using their protractors, two circles. If one circle is 1.2 cm and the othercircle is 10.5 times that big, how big is the other circle? Students will multiplicationto figure out the answer and use their protractors to draw out the two circles.
§In the book CanYou Count to a Googol? The author tells the readers approximately how farthe Earth is from the Sun.
·Math Activity 2: Students will be givendistances of planets from other planets, they will need to round thenumber(distance in miles) to the tens, hundreds, and thousands place.
§Ask students why does the Sun rises and setsevery day.
·Answer: Because the Earth is rotating around theSun, and it’s spinning while rotating around the Sun.
oThe Earth revolves around the Sun, however theEarth also rotates while it’s revolving.
§Ask two students to demonstrate. One student isthe Sun standing still in the middle while the other student is circling the“Sun” while spinning.Students givea demonstration of the relationship between the Sun and Earth. Earth spinswhile rotating around the Sun.
·This correlates with the Sun’s position movingacross the sky as the day passes.
§We live on the Western Hemisphere, when theWestern Hemisphere rotates facing the Sun, this side of the Earth gets hit bythe “Light” or “Rays” of the Sun which is represented as sunrise.
§As the Western Hemisphere rotates away from theSun, the day ends = thus we see the sun setting.
·Activity: Students will be in pairs, they willbe given a flashlight and sphere. The Flashlight represents the Sun while thesphere the Earth. They are to experiment themselves hoe sunrise and sunsetsworks. Then they will have to answer a series of questions.
oQuestions will be along the lines of:The Sun rises at 6AM on the WesternHemisphere, what time is it on the Eastern Hemisphere?
oThe Globe which represents Earth facing the “Sun”,when we are facing the Sun, this means we see the Sun in the sky and it givesus light àthis is the day time. When Earth rotates and the western hemisphere rotates awayfrom the Sun (sunset) à this is the night time, but for the eastern hemisphere,they are in day time.
oFormativeAssessment: The students will be split into two groups. Group one draw on aposter paper the Sun’s position in the Solar System and write down on thebottom information they learned about the Sun. Then group two will draw andwrite down information to why the Sun changes position in the sky during theday. The two groups will give a presentation to the entire class. The rest ofthe class will critique what the group did right, what they liked, whatinformation was wrong, what information was missing, what would they want tolearn more about etc. (Fish bowl discussion)
·BEYOND
oLearningTasks:Now that the lesson is over,the students are to write a reflection in their journals of what they learnedin class today. In their journals, students need to include facts such as whythe Sun’s position in the sky changes throughout the day, and information onwhat they learned on the Sun in general. At the end of the day, students shouldknow the content objectives and be able to answer questions asked by theteacher regarding the Sun.
Back-up:What will you do if the lesson is toochallenging or not challenging enough for students?
If the materialis too easy, I would ask the students to research by themselves three factsthat was not learned in class about the Sun, its relationship with the Earth,Sun in the Solar System, etc..
If the materialis too challenging for the students I will spend more time with the students inthis lesson, so instead of making this a one day lesson, span the lesson intotwo days. One day one I would only talk about information about the Sun; whatthe Sun looks like, the temperature, the size in comparison to the Earth, thesize comparison activity would be the same. Day two I would go into why the Sunchanges its location in the sky as the day passes.