1st Grade · Science · 1-ESS1-1, 1-ESS1-2
Earth, Sun and Moon Lesson Plan for 1st Grade
A ready-to-teach earth, sun and moon lesson for 1st Grade. Everything below is classroom-tested structure: an objective, a 45-minute sequence, a way to check who got it, and 5 printable practice pages.
Approximately 45 minutes
Learning objective
- Explain that day and night are caused by Earth rotating on its axis
- Describe activities and sky observations associated with day and night
- Compare the appearance of the sky during daytime and nighttime
Materials
- Day and Night
- Patterns of the Sun
- Phases of the Moon
- Space Words
- Winter and Summer Sunlight
- Pencils, and whiteboard space for the modeled examples
Lesson steps
1. Ask the question (5 min)
Open with a question about earth, sun and moon that students cannot answer yet. Take predictions and record them without correcting anything. Wrong predictions are the point: you will come back to them.
2. Explore (12 min)
Students investigate earth, sun and moon through a hands-on activity, a demonstration, or a set of images. Their job is to notice and describe, not to be right yet.
3. Explain (10 min)
Now give the vocabulary and the explanation for earth, sun and moon. Tie it directly back to what students just observed and to the predictions on the board. Name which predictions held up.
4. Independent practice (you do) (13 min)
Hand out "Day and Night". Students record what they learned and answer the questions independently. Circulate and press for "how do you know?"
5. Extend the thinking (5 min)
Ask where else earth, sun and moon shows up outside the classroom. Collect two or three examples and leave the question open for tomorrow.
Check for understanding
Ask students to explain earth, sun and moon to a partner in one sentence, then write that sentence down. Collect the sentences: they show you exactly which part of the idea did not land.
Differentiation
Extra support. Students who stall: pull them into a small group and rebuild earth, sun and moon with concrete materials or a simpler text before asking for the written work again. Do not send the page home as homework, it will just rehearse the misunderstanding.
Extension. Students who finish early: ask them to write their own earth, sun and moon problem for a partner to solve, then check the partner's work. Creating a problem is harder than solving one and it surfaces whether they really understand earth, sun and moon.
Skills covered in this lesson
Day and night · The sun · The moon · Stars · Seasonal sunlight · Space vocabulary · Patterns of the sun
