Key Stage 2 - Student activities
The Earth is the planet from where we observe the universe. In this section we describe website activities designed to help pupils look at the Earth as a spinning observatory. We also hope to address some of the basic ideas introduced around Key Stage 2 (pupil aged 8-10), which include:
- How the Sun, Earth and Moon are approximately spherical.
- How the position of the Sun appears to change during the day, and how shadows change as this happens.
- How day and night are related to the spin of the Earth on its own axis.
- That the Earth orbits the Sun once each year, and the Moon takes around 28 days to orbit the Earth.
Key Stage 2 : Ages 8-10 |
||
| Learning points | NSO link | |
| that the Sun, Earth and Moon are approximately spherical | Earth, Sun and Moon | |
| about the relative sizes of the Sun, Moon and Earth | Solar System | |
| that the Sun appears to move across the sky over the course of a day | Day and Night | |
| that it is the Earth that moves, not the Sun, and the Earth spins on its axis once every 24 hours | Day and Night | |
| that it is daytime in the part of the Earth facing the Sun and night-time in the part of the Earth away from the Sun | Day and Night | |
| that the Sun rises in the general direction of the East and sets in the general direction of the West | Day and Night | |
| to make observations of where the Sun rises and sets and to recognise the patterns in these | Day and Night | |
| to present times of sunrise and sunset in a graph and to recognise trends and patterns in the data | Sunrise/Sunset | |
| that the Earth takes a year to make one complete orbit of the Sun, spinning as it goes | Earth Orbit | |
| that the Moon takes approximately 28 days to orbit the Earth | Moon Orbit | |
| that the different appearance of the Moon over 28 days provides evidence for a 28-day cycle | Moon Phases | |
