Planets

Compare two books on a particular planet. Have students discuss the illustrations or photographs to determine which planet they are looking at. How do they know one from the other?

After reading about the planets, allow students to create a class quiz. Have students write questions pertaining to the text and provide the correct answer. Put the class questions into a game show format and play against a neighboring class.

Using two different resources, have students combine the details from both in order to create a report about one of the planets. Create a paper maché model of the planet and give an oral presentation. It might be helpful to make this a group project.

Sort the planets into categories by size, type (rocky vs. gaseous), with moons or no moons, life or no life, etc.

Use the diameters, distance from the sun, average temperature or days in their orbit of the planets to practice rounding to the nearest 10 or 100 place value. Find necessary information at Nine Planets. 

 Compare the diameters of planets in our solar system. Use the numbers to perform simple mathematical operations of addition and subtraction.

Examples of events and timescales could include volcanic explosions and earthquakes, which happen quickly, and erosion of rocks, which occurs slowly.

The locations of mountain ranges, deep ocean trenches, ocean floor structures, earthquakes, and volcanoes occur in patterns. Most earthquakes and volcanoes occur in bands that are often along the boundaries between continents and oceans. Major mountain chains form inside continents or near their edges. Maps can help locate the different land and water features in different areas of Earth.

The Sun is a star that appears larger and brighter than other stars because it is closer. Stars range greatly in their distance from Earth.

Assessment is limited to relative distances, not sizes, of stars. Assessment does not include other factors that affect apparent brightness (such as stellar masses, age, or stage).

The gravitational force of Earth acting on an object near Earth’s surface pulls that object toward the planet’s center.

Humans depend on Earth’s land, ocean, atmosphere, and biosphere for many different resources. Minerals, fresh water, and biosphere resources are limited, and many are not renewable or replaceable over human lifetimes. These resources are distributed unevenly around the planet as a result of past geologic processes.

Emphasis is on the analysis of data from Earth-based instruments, space-based telescopes, and spacecraft to determine similarities and differences among solar system objects, such as relative size, distance, motions, and features. Examples of scale properties include the sizes of an object’s layers (such as crust and atmosphere), surface features (such as volcanoes), and orbital radius. Examples of data include statistical information, drawings and photographs, and models.