Skip to main content

Lesson Plans - Astronomy Unit






Monday - Showed a PowerPoint I made comparing and contrasting the characteristics of the Earth and Moon and discussed with students. Showed an excellent ETV streamline video (A Closer Look at Space - The Moon. Approximately 20 minutes.) on the subject. No notebooking activity.

Tuesday - Read the left hand information reviewing characteristics of the Earth and Moon. Showed Brainpop on both the Earth and Moon. Worked on Earth/Moon popup books (I made the books and students colored and cut the moon and Earth gluing it in the popup location. Students had to list five ways the moon was different from the Earth and five ways the Earth was different from the moon. They also had to trace a path from the moon around the Earth in the popup and note the number of days it took to go around).

Wednesday - Lesson - Why do we see different phases of the moon? Right hand assignment was to start a moon calendar, which we will update daily until Christmas break. I made the calendar full page size and shrunk it to 76% on the copier.

Thursday - Reviewed the moon, Earth, and phases. Watched Bill Nye Moon video and had students take a quiz to go with it. Finished pop up books.

Friday - Students took quiz then cut out phases of the moon for match up game (which didn't turn out as I hoped...pieces too small. I made a larger set, which we played with on the board with plans to make 5 sets for students to work at with their table grouping).

SHORT WEEK DUE TO THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY (Off Wed. - Fri.)

Monday - Reviewed upcoming science fair requirements. Had early turn ins present. Reviewed phases of moon. Had students put them in order. Reviewed lyrics to the Sun, Earth, Moon rap song, which is in their notebook, and played several times.

Tuesday - Last day before the holiday break combined with a going away party for our student interns. Managed to get computer lab for two out of the three classes. Taught students basics of how to use Photostory and let them play with recording their voices, adding music and changing font with intention of giving them a project to do in science hopefully before the Christmas break. No notebook activity but my back up plan...had the computer lab fallen through...was to catch up any missing work and "on the spot" grade as students finished (which is a good grading technique).
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
Great ideas to demonstrate moon phases and how the moon rotates around Earth. Would you be able to upload or share your template for the Earth and Moon book?

Thanks!
November 30, 2009 at 9:27 AM
Eve Heaton said…
Sure. I'll put together a little video on how to make a popup book. It is very easy.

The moon and the Earth cutout I just downloaded from enchantedlearning.com (entering a moon and Earth search and looking at the images). Students colored and cut out.

The cover page I drew by hand so I don't have that in my computer to upload. I just took a sheet of paper folded it in half and drew the cover. I made enough copies for all my classes and had one of my students fold during homeroom.
December 2, 2009 at 6:00 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Digital Citizen Cards

This project idea came from a monthly challenge put out by Adobe Express. We have the free EDU version deployed in our district and I thought this might be fun to try with a class. I liked that there was a prize element where the students could win a classroom set of hero cards  and it tied in with Digital Citizenship Week (October 17-21).  I teamed up with an elementary technology lab teacher and we decided to try it with one fifth grade class.  We looked over the available templates and decided we liked the layout of the 6-8 template the best (because they had to list advice for staying safe online).  One of the best things about these Adobe monthly challenge templates is that they can be modified. The revised template can then be sent to students via a link or through Google Classroom.  All the templates for this challenge Adobe gives you a sample template with sample wording but we wanted students to come up with their own wording. Neither one of us was ke...
Post a Comment
Read more

Secret Messages - How To (Light and Color)

This was fun activity that I got from Roper Mountain Science Institute. They suggested red theater gel to reveal the message, which can get pricy. Another idea I heard was to ask movie theaters to donate left over 3D glasses, which also have a red filter. A guest speaker we had last year said red jello would work. Tried it this week and it worked like a charm. The students thought it was very cool. I found my "attention challenged" students had trouble focusing on making their own secret messages so I was very glad that I had made extra copies of the sheets from the GEMS Color Analyzer book that they could color and then check under the jello.
2 comments
Read more

Random Idea - Website Domain Name

For the past two years I have purchased a yearly subscription to a stand alone website (School World) which I love. I did this because our district was using a very nonuser friendly website for its teachers and I was tired of not being able to do what I want with the website they had given me. I got the idea of a separate website from one of my son's teachers who had done the same thing years ago, she used a different teacher website then School World but it was the same principle. The yearly subscription rate for my own website was $35 and was extremely reasonable. I simply provided a link on my district website to my new site. The district did not have a problem with this. Several teachers were doing it. I am one of these "don't ask...don't tell" teachers so even if there was a problem I wasn't going to find out about it :) Last year the rest of the fourth grade team purchased subscriptions to the site as well. We also purchased our own domain names throug...
1 comment
Read more