Lesson 2
Why do we have days, nights, years and seasons?
Home > Private: *ARCHIVE Year 3 Science – Focus Group > Unit 3 – Earth and Space Sciences > Lesson 2 – Why do we have days, nights, years and seasons?
Lesson Plan
Preparation
- Reference books or the internet will need to be available for students to answer the final question on the worksheet.
- Collect the equipment needed for the investigative activities on experiment sheet. If polystyrene balls are not available, soft and round fruit such as oranges could be used.
Curriculum links
- Australian Curriculum: ACSSU048, ACSHE050, ACSIS053, ACSIS054, ACSIS215, ACSIS060
- NSW Curriculum: ST2-10ES-S, ST2-1WS-S, ST2-4LW-S
- VIC Curriculum: VCSSU056, VCSSU061, VCSIS065, VCSIS066, VCSIS067, VCSIS070, VCSIS072
- WA Curriculum: ACSSU048, ACSHE050, ACSIS053, ACSIS054, ACSIS215, ACSIS060
Suggested teaching strategies
Introduction
- Display the digital lesson on your smartboard to introduce the concept of days, nights, years and seasons.
Development
- Provide students with printable versions of the student summary and worksheet. Have students complete the worksheet.
Differentiation
- As a further extension to the investigation page, do the following activity with the students to assist with understanding the seasons:
- Place the large ball on a table to represent the sun. Use the Earth prop with the clay attached and rotate it on its axis while you slowly revolve around the sun. Stop the clay bob at each ‘season’ to show what is happening according to whether it is facing more or less directly towards the sun.
Conclusion
- Students can share their investigations as a whole class or in groups or pairs.
Assessment
Worksheet answers
1. Teacher check
2. (a) 24 hours (b) 365 days/1 year
3. We have night-time because the Earth rotates. The part of the Earth not facing the sun experiences night-time.
4. Possible answers: Earth rotates, sun does not/Earth revolves around the sun, sun does not/sun is a star, Earth is not/sun is made of hot burning gases, Earth is not/Earth appears blue from space, sun appears yellow/sun is much larger than Earth
5. Summer
6. Four, sun, axis, Earth, sun, winter
Science as a Human Endeavour question
An astronomer is a scientist who studies space and all the things in it. Experiment sheet answers Teacher check If the Lesson 1 has not been covered, explain to the students the comparative size of the sun and the Earth before completing this activity.
Student Pages








nights, years and season?
nights, years and season?


From outer space, the Earth looks like a gigantic ball.
You would see some white clouds surrounding it, lots of blue sections which are the oceans and brown parts which are the continents.


The Earth’s axis is an imaginary line drawn through the centre of the Earth from the North Pole to the South Pole.
It takes 24 hours to spin the whole way round or make one rotation.
The time it takes to do this is called a day.

It looks small to us because it is so far away.
If you drove to the sun at 100km/hr, without stopping, it would take over 170 years to get there!
The sun gives us our heat and light so living things can grow and survive.
Without the sun, Earth as we know it would not exist.
It would be a dark, frozen place without any life.



However, if the sun was much closer, it would be too hot for most people, animals and plants to live.



We can see the sun and feel its heat for about half of each day.
As the Earth rotates, one side of it faces the sun, making it daytime. When that side faces away from the sun, it is night-time.

As the Earth is rotating and we have day and night, it is also moving around the sun.
It takes one year - 365 days - to move or revolve around the sun.
We call this orbiting.




As was explained before, the Earth revolves around the sun.
It does this tilted on its axis.


At the same time, the opposite part of the Earth is leaning away from the sun and gets less heat.
It is winter.


So when children in a place like Australia could be at the beach in their summer, children in a place like Britain could be throwing snowballs at each other in their winter

Science – Unit 3 – Lesson 2 – image – dog in winter

Downloads

Student Summary
Summary of student page information

Worksheet
Activities for students to complete

Investigation Worksheet
An experiment to consolidate learnings