Purpose: This update focuses on engaging students in the topic through sharing their prior knowledge and asking questions.

Lesson:

1. Think-Pair-Share: Students respond to the question: What do you know about space and astronomy? It could be about the sun, moon, the planets, space travel - anything you can think of.

Think-Pair-Square: Students find another pair and share what they talked about. Each person could report what their partner said.

Then students find another pair and repeat the process.

2: Think-Pair-Share: Students return to their original partners and discuss what they would like to find out more about space and astronomy. Students write it as a question on a post-it note and add the question to the Affinity Diagram, looking at other students' questions and placing the post-it next to ones that are similar.

3. Students evaluate the questions by choosing questions that interest you. Write a comment.

Teaching Tips:

Model turning a fact into a question. For example:

• Mars is called the red planet - Why is Mars called the red planet?
• Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system - Mercury is closer to the sun than Venus, why isn't it the hottest planet?

As students add their questions to the whiteboard, model moving them around to be near similar questions. After a while, create headings to help students sort their questions. Examples of headings might be: planets, stars, moon, sun, space travel, telescopes, Big Bang, Black Hole - it really depends on the questions that students add.

The questions will be used in the final research project so leave on display and take photos.

Word Wall

Set up a word wall so students can add words that interest them. Explore sound and letter patterns and morphology of words that are added. If you have access to a whiteboard for the word wall, give students agency by allowing them to write the words and add annotations to the word re tips for spelling and morphology.

Scholar Community

Set up a community in Scholar so that the left side content can be posted to it. This can then be shown to the class on an electronic whiteboard. If students are invited into the community, they can access the content on their own devices and also add comments in the community discussion forum. See the Help tutorial on Creating a Community.

Comments

A comment is included at the end of each update to promote reflection and metacognition of students' developing science understandings. They also provide an opportunity for regular writing for a real audience. Further, more able students can model extended comments for their peers. Alternatively, copy the comment prompt into Google Classroom.

Purpose: This update sets up the conceptual focus of the learning module - understanding the rotation of the earth on its axis.

Lesson:

1. Start the lesson by showing the youtube videoclip. 

Use a Think-Pair-Share for students to discuss their favourite parts and to generate new questions that they now add to the Affinity Diagram. This is an important activity to extend students' thinking and questioning.

Tell students that this videoclip focuses on the earth as a planet which will be the focus of one big question: How do night and day happen?

2. Baseline knowledge activity: Students draw and annotate a picture to explain how night and day happens. 

Tell them the drawing should include:

• three circles for the earth, moon and sun
• arrows showing the direction of movement of the earth, moon and sun
• words to explain what is happening

3. Students add comments to the discussion forum.

Teaching Tips:

As students add more questions to the whiteboard, encourage them to move them around and create new headings/categories if necessary. The questions will be used in the final research project so leave on display and take photos.

Collect the drawings. Students will repeat this activity later when they have learned more about the rotation of the earth on its axis. This initial drawing will enable students to reflect on what the have learned.

Purpose: To provide students with hands-on, shared experiences of the shapes, relative sizes and positions of the Sun, Earth and Moon.

Lesson:

1. Review the previous lesson. Invite students to share ideas or experiences of how people travel around the Earth, such as by flying or sailing. Where possible, draw on students’ experiences of travelling to other parts of the Earth. This might help students appreciate that the Earth is a sphere and not flat, as it appears.
2. Ask students to suggest objects that they think are the same shape as the Earth, for example, a basketball. Ask students the name of the shape (a sphere) and discuss how a sphere is different from a circle or a disc. Discuss the shapes of the Sun and Moon. Add ‘sphere’ to the word wall.
3. Discuss what students know about the sizes of the Sun, Earth and Moon, particularly in comparison with each other.
4. Introduce three spherical objects, such as a basketball, a tennis ball and a marble. Ask students to match each spherical object to the Sun, Earth or Moon to indicate their size, for example, basketball—Sun, tennis ball—Earth, marble—Moon, and give reasons for their match.
5. Discuss a common observation that the Moon appears to be similar in size to the Sun.
6. Explain that students will be working in collaborative learning teams to find out more about the sizes and positions of the Sun, Earth and Moon.
7. Teams will use a basketball to represent the Sun and a tennis ball to represent the Moon. Organise teams and allocate roles: one student = Sun (basketball), one student = Moon (tennis ball) and one student taking 'the view from Earth'.
8. Taking students outside, The 'Sun' and the 'Moon' students stand side by side holding their balls in their hands. The third team member will stand in front and be able to view both balls. Ask students to imagine that the observing student is standing on the Earth and looking at the Sun and Moon.
9. The student with the basketball (the Sun) will move backwards until the student viewing the balls observes that the basketball appears to be the same size as the tennis ball (the Moon). Students swap positions so that each team member has a turn to be the observer. In teams, students discuss their observations and relate them to the sizes of the Sun and Moon.
10. When you return to the classroom, view images, such as photographs or internet images, or show video footage, for example, using the internet or video/DVD, that illustrates the spherical shapes of the Sun, Earth and Moon.
11. Provide students with time to reflect and record their ideas about the lesson activities in their science books or post comments on line. You might like to provide students with prompts, such as:

• Something new I learned today was…
• Something that interested me today was…
• Something I wonder about is…

Teaching Tips:This activity demonstrates that two different-sized objects can appear to be the same size if they are different distances from the observer. Refer to Primary Connections pp.18-19 for additional information about the size, distance and relativities of the Sun, Earth and Moon.

Purpose: To introduce current scientific views to students on how the Earth's rotation on its axis causes night and day. (Students will be simultaneously looking at other cultural explantions of night and day in literacy lessons and later on will be considering the difference between using observations/stories and scientific inquiry to explain things).

In this lesson students will use a science investigation to demonstrate how the spinning of the Earth on its axis causes night and day and how the Earth orbits the Sun and the Moon orbits the Earth. 

Lesson:

1. Think pair share:

• What do changing shadows tell us about the movement of the Earth?
• Why can't we see the sun at night?

2. Explicitly teach that an axis is an imaginary line through the middle of an object that the object rotates or spins around. The Earth's axis runs through the centre of the Earth from the north pole to the south pole. Refer to the diagram on the student side.

3. Explicitly teach that scientists often use models to help them explain how things work. Today we will be using a model to explain how the Earth rotates on its axis and how the sun shines on the Earth and creates day and night.

4. Explain that we will be using balls to represent the Earth and Moon and a torch to represent the Sun. Ask students to consider whether the model has any limitations and whether this will impact on the results of the experiment (e.g. distance between Earth and Sun may not reflect actual distance and scale may not be accurate).

5. In groups of 3 or 4 students act out the rotation of the Earth. Each group needs a large round ball (e.g. netball or basketball), a picture of Australia, a small ball (e.g. tennis ball) and a torch. Cut out and stick the map of Australia on the large ball. One student holds the large ball and one student shines the torch (sun) on Australia. The torch stays still and the student holding the ball spins or rotates the ball anti-clockwise on its axis to show the Australia moving from light (day) into shadow (night). Students observe shadows and work out when they think Australia experiences sunrise, midday, sunset and midnight.

6. While continuining to rotate the Earth on its axis, the student holding ball orbits (circles around)anti-clockwise around the sun. The student holding the small ball (Moon) rotates around the Earth.

7. Discuss:

• How is spinning different from orbiting?
• How long does it take for the Earth to spin once on its axis?

8. Students complete 'The Spinning Earth" sheet (Primary Connections Resource sheet 2, pg 31). Students label the Sun and the Earth and shade the half of the Earth that is facing away from the Sun in shadow and draw Australia on the half it is on in the day and night time. Draw arrows around the Earth to show which direction it spins or rotates in (anti-clockwise). Label which side of the Earth is day and night.

9. Explicitly teach that scientists use a scientific process to find out things. The process can be summed up at Question, Claim, Evidence and Reasoning:

• Question: They think about what question they are trying to answer
• Predicting: They make a prediction called a hypothesis
• Conducting: They plan and conduct an experiment to test their hypothesis and collect evidence.
• Analysing: They work out whether the evidence supports their prediction.

10. Model how we could write up the Earth axis experiment using this scientific process:

• Brainstorm a Question: e.g. what causes night and day?
• Model how to write a hypothesis in integrated workbook: e.g. the position of the Earth in relation to the Sun changes as the Earth rotates on its axis which changes the amount of light that reaches the Earth and causes night and day.
• Model how to write a summary of the evidence gathered in the experiment in workbooks: e.g. the Earth rotating on its axis causing the spot the sun shone on to move from sun to shadow. The torch light represented sunlight (day) and shadow (night).
• Reflect as a class on how the evidence supports the hypothesis.

11. Assessment: Students re-draw the base-line assessment of the Earth's orbit around the sun and rotation on its axis.

Teaching tips: The words Earth, Sun and Moon are proper nouns and start with a capital letter.

Purpose: Western science uses evidence-based claims about how the Earth's rotation on its axis causes regular changes, including day and night. The purpose of this lesson to explore how different histories and cultures have explained the phenomena of night and day.

Lesson: Explore these stories with the students.

Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky: an African Folktale from Nigeria

Wuriunpranilli - The Sun Woman. The Aboriginal people of Northern Australia tell this story to explain why there is night and day.

Maui Tames the Sun: An old Maori folktale.

Students work in cooperative learning groups to read, comprehend and reflect on these stories.

Students then share their understandings with others through a stand-up, hand-up, pair-up cooperative learning structure.

Have students focus on the reading strategy 'synthesising' to prepare for sharing their understandings of the stories with others.

Teacher tip: model the synthesising strategy to develop students understanding of how to identify key parts of the story that can be brought together and shared. Also model the cooperative learning structure of stand-up, hand-up, pair-up.

Examples of propmpting questions:

What was your favourite part of the story?

What did you learn from the story?

How does the story connect with what we are learning in Science?

Purpose: In this update students deepen their understanding of the scientific inquiry process, particularly the importance of a question, claim, evidence and reasoning. It also connects the investigations students have completed with the cultural stories they have read in their literacy sessions.

Lesson

1. Use a Think-Pair-Share for students to reflect on the cultural stories about astronomy about the purpose of these stories - to explain the past and the beginnings of the world, to create laws/moral purpose/guidelines for people's lives.

Use another Think-Pair-Share for students to discuss what these stories were based on - observations of the sky, e.g. movement of the sun, moon, stars and planets, shapes of constellations etc. Then students watch video on how Eratosthenes worked out the earth was not flat. 

Students record key points of how Eratosthenes following the science inquiry process in "Ancient Times" on the Venn Diagram.

Students share key points from their Venn Diagrams.

2. Sudents read a short article about how modern astronomers discovered there was water on the moon.

They record key points about how the scientists followed the science inquiry process in "Modern Times" on the Venn Diagram.

* * * Alternatively, students could work in groups of 4 with 2 students working on the videoclip and the other 2 on the article and then reporting to each other.

3. In the middle circle, discuss the four components of the scientific inquiry process

• Question: They think about what question they are trying to answer
• Predict: They make a prediction called a hypothesis
• Conduct: They plan and conduct an experiment to test their hypothesis and collect evidence.
• Analyse: They work out whether the evidence supports their prediction.

Discuss how aspects of the scientific inquiry process were common to both approaches and how important they are. Reflect on how the students used them in conducting their investigations. Discuss how modern equipment  from the telescope (1610 when Galileo first used the telescope for astronomy) to modern space technology, brings much more certainty to science inquiry.

The videoclip was selected as it links to Earth's day and night cycle.

Some flat earthers believe that the sun and moon are spheres measuring 32 miles (51 kilometers) that move in circles 3,000 miles (4,828 km) above the plane of the Earth. (Stars, they say, move in a plane 3,100 miles up.) Like spotlights, these celestial spheres illuminate different portions of the planet in a 24-hour cycle. Flat-earthers believe there must also be an invisible "antimoon" that obscures the moon during lunar eclipses.

Teaching Tips

Note the videoclip is American and uses miles and an example of Chicago. Discuss this before the students watch it.

Provide each student with the Venn Diagram template.

Science Inquiry Process Venn Diagram

Purpose: To conduct an experiment on the effect of time and day on length and direction of shadows, record observations and measurements and construct a graph to represent their results.

Lesson:

1. Watch video (refer to student side). Think pair share:

• what information did you already know?
• what did you find interesting?

2. Explicitly teach:

• Today we are going to conduct an experiment to find out about shadows and why the Sun appears to move across the sky.
• Ask students "why does the sun look like it's moving across the sky? Is it actually moving - why or why not? (The sun stays still but because the Earth rotates so quickly on its axis the Sun appears to travel in an arc across the sky. The height of the arc varies depending on where the person looking is on the Earth and what time of year it is.)
• Why does the sun rise in the East and set in the West? (because the earth rotates anti-clockwise on its axis).

3. Conduct Shadow Stick experiment. Ask students to Think, Pair Share:

• what happens to the length and direction of shadows during the day
• When are shadows at their longest and shortest?

Explicitly teach that we are going to measure the shadows that a paddle pop stick makes throughout the day.

As a class develop a hypthesis that predicts what we think will happen. (E.g. I think that the shadow made by a stick will move from left to right throughout the day as the Earth rotates on its axis).

Explain that scientists try and make sure their experiments are a "fair test". "Variables" are things that can be changed in an experiment. Scientists try and only change one thing at a time in experiments to ensure they have a fair test and so they know what caused any observed changes.

Think pair share: what are some of the things that could affect the length and direction of the shadows in our experiment? (e.g. time of day, position of sun, height of shadow stick, position of paper). How would our results be affected if we changed the position or size of the stick in the middle of the experiment? Could we trust the results?

Ask students to fill out the Shadow Stick investigation Planner Sheet to explain the scientific process that will be used in the experiment. (Refer to Primary Connections p.g. 37). Discuss and model how to fill out the different sections.

Conduct the Shadow Stick Experiment (Primary Connections p.g. 41-44). Tips: Use a paddle pop stick as the shadow stick and attach it to a piece of paper with blue tac. Work out which direction is north with a phone compass rather than individual student compasses.

Refer to Primary Connections for full details of experiment. Key steps include measuring and recording results at various times of the day on a table (see below, copy saved in t drive), completing the Explaining Results Worksheet (refer to Primary Connections, Resource Sheet 3, p.g. 39) and recording results from the table in a graph.

Length of shadows at different times:

4. Revise how scientists use a scientific process to find out things. The process is Question, Predicting, Conducting and Analysing.

Question: They think about what question they are trying to answer
Predicting: They make a prediction called a hypothesis
Conducting: They plan and conduct an experiment to test their hypothesis and collect evidence.
Analysing: They work out whether the evidence supports their prediction.

5. We wrote a brief scientific report on our Earth rotating around the axis experiment, focusing on the hypothesis and results. Now we are going to write a report of the Shadow Stick experiment, adding in a few more details, like materials and method. It is important to include these details so that other scientists can replicate your experiments and test your results and conclusion.  Model how to write up the Shadow Stick experiment:

• Title: Shadow Stick Experiment
• Materials: list materials used in the experiment
• Hypothesis: With our question in mind (what happens to the length and direction of shadows during the day), what hypothesis (prediction) did we come up with?
• Method: In steps write what you did to conduct the experiment.
• Results: Write a summary of the evidence gathered in the experiment.
• Conclusion: What conclusions can you draw? Did your results support your hypothesis?
• Further Questions: What issues are raised by the results that might need further investigation or explanation.

Purpose: Students embed their understanding of the science inquiry process through an individual or group (up to the teacher) inquiry project.

The projects are based on the big understandings and "generating questions (Update 1 in this Learning Module)". They can choose to research and present their understandings on a range of  topics. Give students choice but guide them in their selection.

Differentiation

• How big are each of the planets? How do they compare to one another? (This is a purposeful question for scaffolding understanding of lower achieving students)
• Choose your own question that links to the big ideas discussed in this learning module (This is a potential option for the higher achieving students)

Teaching Tips

As students work on their projects, offer mini workshops to develop students' technology skills in:

• Google slides
• Using search engines
• Checking reliability of information
• Inserting images into documents