THE PLANET EARTH

THE PLANET EARTH LESSON

Directions:

Print the The Planet Earth reading comprehension passage and questions (see below).

Students should read the passage silently, then answer the questions.  Teachers may also use the text as part of a classroom lesson plan.

Exercise:

As a teacher, you may want to have the children think about when they are in a car and looking out, it appears that the world is moving, but it is the car. That is how the earth revolves around the sun. The sun stays still while the earth moves. Tell them that people once believed the earth was flat and others thought it was round and that the sun revolved around the earth. Explain that it became a fact, not just a theory, when we sent people into outer space.

Lesson Excerpt

When you go outside at night you can see millions of stars, so many you cannot count them. There are also planets in the sky and one of them is Earth. The Earth is a planet in which we find life. Earth is like a big spinning ball, and because of that, we have day and night. In the day, we are turned toward the sun and at night, we face the moon. When we have daylight, the other side of Earth is night.

The earth's shape is like a ball, but is a little flat at the top and bottom. These flat parts are called the North Pole and the South Pole.

Earth is the only known planet that has life with plants and animals sharing the surface. The earth consists of land and water. About one fourth of the earth is land and about three fourths of the earth is made up of water in the rivers, seas, and oceans. There is oxygen on the earth's entire surface.

The earth belongs to a family of stars and planets called the universe, or galaxy. The earth was formed millions of years ago. It was a big ball, made up of rocks and gases. At that time, it was very hot. As the years went by, its outer portion cooled down because of rain. There are three parts to the earth; the mantle, the core, and the crust. We live on the crust. The center of the earth is a solid ball of melted metals, melted rocks, and is the core. The part between the crust and core is called the mantle.

The earth continuously spins around an imaginary line passing through its center. This imaginary line is called the axis. The spinning of the earth is called rotation. It takes 24 hours for the earth to complete one rotation. That is why one day and one night equals 24 hours. (continued...)