Out of this World - Level 4 Sample Unit
In this activity, students explore key questions about the solar system.
Students are provided with a scenario: They are travel agents trying to entice
people to travel to a destination within the solar system. They present a
multimedia session and brochure to inform potential travellers about the destination.
Teachers pose 4–6 key questions such as:
- What is the solar system?
- What are comets and which ones have visited our solar system?
- How does solar activity, such as sun flares, affect Earth or the other
planets?
- What are meteorites and what is their relationship to our solar system?
If students have prior experience of models, for example, transforming and
transferring energy, key questions could include:
- What is a model and how is the solar system a model?
Using a jigsaw approach, each group
member is allocated a different number. Students join with members of other
groups assigned the same number and research the key question for their allocated
number. For the research task, teachers provide resources to facilitate the
completion of a fact sheet. Students return to their original groups and report
their findings.
In a journal, students reflect
on their own knowledge of the solar system in relation to the jigsaw activity.
They identify information they know and information that they are unsure about.
They record a learning goal for the unit.
Teachers provide opportunities throughout the unit for students to further
reflect on how their understanding and knowledge of the solar system has developed
or changed and how they have worked in a group. As an alternative to a journal,
in pairs, students could interview each other about what they have learnt
at different stages. At the end of the unit, students write a short report
or use a K-W-L-H approach to record their
learning.
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