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Curriculum: Making Sense of Planet Earth and Beyond. Levels 2-4

Teacher Notes

The most obvious relationship we have with the Sun is that of the day and night. Our planet is spinning on an axis. If we stick a knitting needle through the axis line it would stick out at the North and South poles. One rotation is completed every 23 hours and 56 minutes.

The Earth is spinning around its axis at speeds of 1600km/hr.

Making Day

Although the idea that Earth spins creating day and night sounds simple, it is one of the most difficult concepts for anyone to understand. When we look at the Sun, it moves, not ourselves. We talk about it rising a setting, these are words which sound like its moving.

Modeling is a way of allowing students to see what actually happens, unfortunately however, seeing is not believing!

You Need

1. a dark room
2. a lamp
3. a globe of the earth
4. a small model person to be blu-tacked on to the globe or a sticker to represent a person.

Do This

Attach the 'person' to New Zealand. Show that when the person is on the side towards the Sun, it is light or daytime. Slowly turn the Earth and see how the person moves around into the dark side or night.

Extend It

More fully explain this idea by seeing that when the person first comes into the Sun, it is appearing just over the Earth's horizon. In the middle of the day the sun is right over the person, high in the sky and by sunset the sun is again seen to disappear below the opposite horizon.

This can best be seen by individually holding Earth and lining your eye up with the person in each of the three scenarios.

Challenge

Challenge students to figure out which way the Earth spins. Give them the following hint: the East coast of New Zealand sees the sun rise first.

Why is New Zealand be the first major country to see the sun every day? What is the first New Zealand city to see the sun?

Notes from a Classroom Teacher

'As soon as we stuck the figure on the Earth, all the children said "He's upside down"! and "Why don't we fall off?" So we spent a lot of time with the ideas of up and down, top and bottom.

We talked about gravity being a force that pulls us down, and down is the middle of the Earth, and the sky is up! I held out a soccer ball and asked them to touch the top, then I turned it upside down and asked them to touch the bottom and so on … We decided that it was all a matter of where you were looking at it from. We decided it was a better idea to use north, south, east and west when we were talking about where you are on the earth.

Allow children the opportunity to look carefully at the globe. decide you are going to plan a midnight feast. We are going to eat it in New Zealand but we want to eat what someone else is eating in the world at exactly the same time.

So where is it lunchtime, breakfast time or dinner time and what will they be eating while we are sound asleep.

Calculate the actual middle of the day based on the Sun, by finding exact times for sunrise and sunset. This information is usually in the weather section of the newspaper. Find out how long the day is, and then divide this time by 2 to find the exact middle of the day.

Does this match up with the time your clocks say is lunch? This mid point is known as solar noon. repeat this a week later. Is the day getting shorter or longer? What season are we in?