Do you teach about the solar system in middle school and are looking for a planets lesson plan that will be super engaging for your students? Read more below to learn how you can create your own planet lesson plan using the WOW Factor!
Besides biology, one of my favorite things to talk about is the planets and the solar system. It is absolutely fascinating to know that there is so much out there. What’s funny about it is that our solar system doesn’t even touch the amount that is out there. So neat!
However, the planets of our solar system are fascinating by themselves. The fact that we can know details about them and they are so far away is super cool too.
In this post, I will share how you can relay this cool information to your students. First, I will share some WONDER strategies that you can do with your students to help them become engaged and internally motivated to learn more about the planets. Second, I will share an interactive lesson that your students will love! Finally, I will share some WIDEN activities your students can do to take a deeper dive in learning about the planets.
Which will you add to your planets lesson plan?
WONDER Strategies of Your Lesson Plan About Planets
Begin with a WOW Factor Lesson on Solar System
Before teaching about the planets, I think it’s important to learn about the solar system in general so that students can understand the planets’ place in the solar system. You can even branch out and discuss our solar system’s place in the universe!
Well, how do you have an introduction to and introduction? What? You can still bring the WOW Factor in teaching about the solar system and then jump right into the planets deep dive. You can create your own planet lesson plan!
What am I talking about? Here’s the solar system WOW Factor lesson plan. You can choose some WONDER activities from here, and then dive into both the solar system and planets lesson that I will discuss below.
For example, you can use the Sky Map app to explore the planets, but also the constellations, stars, nebulae and other items in the solar system. This will get them excited about all there is out there.
After, you can dive deeper into interactive lessons (I’ll discuss this more below!)
You can create the planets lesson plan right for you!
Find the Planets!
Already touched on the solar system, but are looking for another engaging WONDER strategy? You can have your students look for the planets with their naked eye.
Check out the time and date website. You can see the planets visible in the night sky for your location. The day before you teach your lesson, visit this site as a class.
After you find your location, you can see what planets will be visible in the night sky (or morning sky) with the naked eye, or even with binoculars.
Give your students a homework assignment to go out and see if they can find the planets!
This is a fun assignment to add to the beginning of your planets lesson plan!
Planets Interactive Lesson
Above, I’ve mentioned some awesome lessons that will engage your students. So, here they are.
Interactive lessons are engaging and fun lessons that students can go through independently or as a class. When they do, they learn the content, but are better able to retain the content due to embedded interactive activities.
The embedded activities allow for the content to be separated into chunks with students processing the information before moving on to learn more. This helps to reduce student cognitive load.
In addition, there are other things included in these lessons that reduce cognitive load such as highlighting important information, starting simple, and taking out unnecessary information.
For learning about the planets, this planets interactive lesson is perfect! They will take a closer look at each planet and learn about the characteristics that make each planet unique. They also will explore things such as what makes a planet a planet, the inner and outer planets, and the moons on planets of the solar system. It’s great to add to your planets in the solar system lesson plan.
The embedded activities included things such as drag-and-drop activities, questions, a KWL, exploring an interactive solar system, and more!
This is a great lesson to pair with the solar system interactive lesson!
This lesson can be found in the Bright in the Middle shop.
It can also be found on TPT.
These are great planets lessons.
Widen Strategies for Your Lesson Plan on Planets
If you are still wanting to customize your solar system and planets WOW Factor lesson, you can always use a WIDEN strategy to discuss the whole solar system. You could also do a solar system WIDEN strategy and take good look at WIDEN strategies for the planets only! Here are two ideas to add to your planets lesson plan!
Deep Dive into Planets
One thing that you can do is a planet research project! Since there are 8 planets (poor Pluto!), you can split your class into 8 groups and give them each a planet to research.
Here are some things that they should research for each planet.
- axis of rotation
- time it takes to orbit the Sun
- planet’s atmosphere
- planet’s mass
- interior of the planet
- special characteristics
- moons
- and anything else you want to add
How are they going to present the project?: any way you want them to! You can have them to present with a traditional poster board or a slides presentation, but you can also have your students present their findings in other ways such as:
- a filmed documentary
- a brochure to share with an alien
- a TikTok
- a book
- a skit
- a RAFT assignment
There are so many ways! I love this list by Minds in Bloom that share creative ways for students to share information on a topic!
Toilet Paper Solar System
Size and scale is an important concept for middle school students to work to grasp. Why not work on this skill with the solar system planets!
In this activity by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, students can building a scale model of the solar system using a toilet paper roll!
This lesson give you all of the instructions and information.
I love it because it’s simple to follow. It gives you the number of squares of toilet paper from the Sun for each planet! It even has our little dwarf planet, Pluto.
This activity is fun and engaging. You’ll also need to take a “field trip”. The toilet paper can get long, so you’ll need to do this in a hallway or in the gym. You might be able to do it outside if the wind is calm.
Enjoy creating your WOW Factor planets lesson plans!
Bonus: Earth and Planets Task Cards
Looking to take a deeper dive into data and look at what makes Earth so different and how the planets compare to each other? This is the activity! This closely aligns with NC Standard ESS.6.1.2 “Analyze and interpret data to compare the planets in our solar system in terms of: size and gravitational force relative to Earth, surface and atmospheric features, relative distance from the sun, and ability to support life.”, but aligns with other state standards as well!
If you are looking for an activity where students look at data about the different planets and interpret the data looking at size, atmospheric features, distance from the Sun, and more, check these out! This also includes comparison questions to Earth’s moon!
Right now, this is only available inside of the Bright in the Middle Membership.
Help your students master science content!
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