Yesterday, Crew Hamill completed a Padlet in which each child added their own statements to each section, detailing the information they could remember from everything we have learned during our first science case study. Miss Hamill was impressed with just how much we’d remembered!

To continue Case Study 1, we have looked in more detail at the Moon and how it orbits Earth. We learned that the Moon is 239,000 miles away from Earth and that it takes just over 27 days to orbit the Earth. Did you know that we only ever see one side of the Moon? Amazingly, we learned that the Moon doesn’t actual have it’s own light and that we only see it because the light from the Sun reflects off the surface of the Moon. As the Earth orbits our planet, the amount of the Moon we can see differs and this splits into eight phases – New Moon, Waning Gibbous, Waning Quarter, Waning Crescent, Full Moon, Waxing Gibbous, Waxing Quarter and Waxing Crescent. We learned that when the Moon is in the ‘Waxing’ phase, the amount of the Moon we see gets bigger and when it is in its ‘Waning’ phase, we see less of the Moon. We then worked in mini crews to recreate the phases of the Moon using Oreos! We even got to eat them afterwards!

To kick start Case Study 1, we looked at the movement of Earth in relation to the Sun and Moon. We did a lot of research by watching and interactive video that gave us quiz questions throughout, testing that we were paying attention and taking in all of the facts. We then came together as a crew to make a video that detailed everything we learned. Our main facts were:

• The Earth moves in two different ways: 1. It rotates on its axis. 2. It orbits around the Sun.
• It takes the Earth 24 hours (1 day) to rotate fully on its axis.
• It takes the Earth 365 and a quarter days (1 year) to orbit the Sun. 
• When we are facing towards the sun, we get day time.
• When we are facing away from the sun, we get night time. 
• The Sun appears to move across the sky but it doesn’t. 
• The Sun stays where it is and Earth’s rotation makes it disappear.

You can see our video by scanning this QR code:

Today, we began building our background knowledge on our solar system and how the planet within it orbit (move around) the Sun. We worked in mini crews to make notes as we watched videos that detailed each of the 8 planets and how they each orbit the Sun. Every time we watched something new, we changed the colour of our pen to build upon the knowledge we had already gained from the previous video. We are going to use this knowledge to write a paragraph of what we now know about how the planets move in our next expedition lesson.