Planet Projects, part 1


We are finishing up our FOSS Planetary Science unit.  The culminating activity has the students creating a posting advertising vacation spots on their planet.  The students have to include information about their planet but have to do it in a way that entices a person to come and visit.

The first place each of the groups wanted to look for information was the planet posters that I had posted.


You have find them in my TpT or TN store.

Complete with other topics
or just the planets themselves.

They also spent time looking up information on the Internet.


 Here are some of the projects just getting started.




I printed each group one sheet of pictures.  If they wanted more, they had to bring them in themselves.  

Stayed tuned for part 2 when I show you how the posters turned out.

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Phases of the Moon

One of the big science standards for 5th and 6th grade is knowing how the phases of the moon occur.  I always bring in a lamp and have the kids stand in a big circle around the room.  I try to get it as dark as I can make it, to get the best effect.

The students all have styrofoam balls that they stick to the end of their pencil. Their head is the Earth and the styrofoam is the Moon.  As they rotate around in their spot the phases of the moon appear on the styrofoam.




New Moon
Full Moon

1st Quarter

How do you teach phases of the moon?  Share what has worked in your classroom.



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How to use task cards in your classroom: SCOOT

I will start this by saying that I always thought that SCOOT was an activity for the younger kids (not that I've known about it for very long, LOL!) But I found out today and that the older kiddos like it too!

After creating my Energy Posters, I wanted to create some sort of activity to go with them.  I started by creating a board game (more on that at a later time) and then wanted to do something that the whole class could participate in. I settled in on task cards that could also be used for a SCOOT activity..  I made a set of 36 cards. I don't know about you, but my classes sometimes go up to 33 or 34 students.

For those of you that don't know what scoot is, here are the directions:

The first thing I did was to pass out the cards.  I even put them on the empty desks and back table to be able to use them all. 


I then passed out the Energy Scoot recording sheet.


I started out with giving them two minutes to answer the questions, but realized it was too much time for these questions.  I set my timer to go off after a minute and told the students that was their signal to move.



They had a blast doing this! We were able to do some review for the state testing that was going on this week and the students felt like they were playing a game.

You can get you own copy of the Energy Task cards at TpT:

Energy Task Cards at TpT

or you can get them at Teacher's Notebook:

Energy Task Cards at TN

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