Lesson Plan: Day and Night
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to identify patterns in nature including day, night, sunset, and sunrise, explain the cause of day and night, and describe how they differ.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- describe examples of patterns in nature,
- describe how the spin of Earth creates day and night,
- label or identify a diagram to show daytime and nighttime,
- link the spin of Earth to the apparent movement of the Sun across the sky,
- define sunrise and sunset,
- explain why you can see the Sun in the day and the stars at night,
- describe our sun as a star and why it appears bigger.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- examples of patterns,
- day and night occurring daily,
- the stars and the Sun as objects in the sky.
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- the seasons,
- the length of a day,
- Earth circling the Sun,
- the directions of sunrise and sunset,
- how the time of sunrise and sunset changes throughout the year,
- how shadows change as the Sun moves across the sky.
