These activities will help students understand where the sun is in the solar system and how big the earth, moon, and sun are.
In this comprehensive lesson, students work collaboratively to learn about the eight planets. They will research a planet's size, its comparison to other planets and its characteristics and use the information they find to publish an acrostic poem to share with their classmates. They will also produce a poster and create a technology presentation such as a Prezi or a PowerPoint.
In this activity, students conduct research about the sun and then write questions that might be used in an interview of the sun.
In this lesson, students will determine ways to order the planets. Teacher directed inquiry will suggest that they first order the planets according to their distance from the sun. Students will then work on their own methods of determining "order."
Take students on a musical journey to learn “What Makes Music, Music?,” exploring fundamentals such as melody, rhythm, dynamics, tempo, and texture! This resource's link takes you to a very short form that gives you free access to the teacher guide/lesson plan books, student readings, videos, and presentation slides. The 8 lessons are:
- Introduction to the Orchestra & Musical Storytelling with Beethoven
- Form with Jessie Montgomery
- Dynamics with Mozart
- Rhythm with Joplin
- Texture with Anthony Kelley
- Tempo with Arturo Márquez (online concert)
- Melody with Terry Mizesko
- Finale with Carlos Simon (online concert)
The purpose of this lesson is to teach students about the different planets by allowing them to pretend to be the planets and walk in the orbits themselves. They will learn the number of planets, the order of the planets, the definition of an orbit and the distance between the relative planets and the sun. The students will also learn the difference between rotation and revolution.
Students use clue cards and images of the planets to learn about and create a sequenced model of the planets in our solar system.
Students will work in groups to research the different objects (the eight planets, comets and asteroids) in our solar system. Each group will produce a fact sheet. The groups will present their findings to the class and combine the fact sheets into a class encyclopedia.
This online book provides information about the sun.
This interactive helps students practice identifying Terrestrial and Jovian planets.
This interactive helps students practice ordering the planets.
Each student or small group of students represents a planet in order to illustrate the spacing of the planets. The Planetary Data Table at the beginning of these activities lists the distance of each planet from the Sun (in astronomical units). By translating these numbers into paces, the students can pace off the distances to the planets.
This printable PDF booklet provides images of each planet which can be used to make a solar system mobile. The dwarf planet Pluto is included.
In this lesson, students will participate in a class discussion of the solar system. Next, they will use a website to learn more about the solar sytem, then work in teams to create a model using balloons to represent each planet. A hyperlink to the website is included in the lesson along with a reproducible student recording sheet.
This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 3rd Grade Science.
This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 3rd Grade Science.
In this slide show, students learn that the sun is an average size star and the center of our solar system. One of the things surrounding it is an asteroid belt, and the four planets inside that belt are called the inner planets. They are: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
In this slide show, students learn that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are the outer planets of our solar system. There is a planetoid called Pluto out there, too.
In this video, students learn that the universe describes space and all of the planets, stars, galaxies, and other rmatter contained there.
In this slide show, students learn that Earth's moon reflects the sun, and so it is visible at night. It also rotates at the same rate that it orbits, 29.5 days, which means that we only see one side of it. The moon has one-sixth of the gravity of Earth and no atmosphere at all. Phases of the moon are also illustrated.