The Solar System

Content Objectives

Students will:

• Learn about our solar system.
• Access prior knowledge and build background about our solar system and what is in it.
• Explore and apply the concept of how our solar system fits together.

Language Objectives

Students will:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the concept our solar system.
• Orally use words that name the parts of our solar system.
• Extend oral vocabulary by speaking about how our solar system fits together.
• Use key concept words [planet, revolve, rotate, moon, gravity, sun, star, orbit, astronomers, galaxy, universe].

Other

Explain

• Use the slideshow to review the key concept words.
• Explain that students are going to learn about our solar system:
• What is included in our solar system.
• What holds our solar system together.
• The difference between planets, moons and the sun.
• How the solar system relates to the rest of space.

Model

• After the host introduces the slideshow, point to the photo on screen. Ask students: What is our solar system? (a group of planets that revolve around the sun).
• Ask students: What is included in our solar system? (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, each of their moons and the sun).
• Ask students: How is the solar system arranged? (gravity holds it together, the planets rotate and revolve around the sun, the moons revolve around the planets, planets and moons follow orbits as they revolve).

Guided Practice

• Guide students through the next five slides showing them things in space. Always have the student discuss whether or not these things belong to our solar system.

Apply

• Play the games that follow. Have them discuss with their partner the different topics that appear during the Talk About It feature.
• After the first game, ask students what personal interest they have in space and the solar system. After the second game, encourage them to share experiences they have had with studying space or questions they have regarding things they wonder about space.

Close

• Ask students: Do you think there are other solar systems in the universe? Why?
• Summarize for students that many scientists devote their entire lives to studying our solar system. Encourage them to make up a solar system of their own and describe how it fits together and what each of the planets are called and what they are like.