GENEVA COLLEGE

Beaver Falls, PA

THE SOLAR SYSTEM LESSON PLAN

Name: McKayla Jacobs Date: March 30 & 31, 2022

Subject: Skills Grade Level: 6th, 7th, and 8th Grade

I. Topic
The Solar System: Identifying the planets and placing them in the correct order.

II. PA or Common Core Standards

3.3.4.B1
Identify planets in our solar system and their basic characteristics.
Describe the earth’s place in the solar system that includes the sun (a star), planets, and many moons.
Recognize that the universe contains many billions of galaxies and that each galaxy contains many billions of
stars.

III. Learning Objectives: Objectives must be written using observable verbs

TSWBAT identify each planet by seeing a picture.
TSWBAT place the planets in the correct order from the sun.

IV. Materials
Solar System PowerPoint
View Board
iPad (teacher only)
Order the Planets worksheet (Copies for each student to have 2)

V. Lesson Development
a. Introduction
To begin the lesson, the teacher will give each student an Order the Planets worksheet to
complete as a pretest on the solar system. The students will need to place the planets in order from
the sun, placing numbers next to each planet's name. (Looking for the answers Mercury-1, Venus-2,
Earth-3, Mars-4, Jupiter-5, Saturn-6, Uranus-7, and Neptune-8.)
 The students will then turn this in by placing it on the teacher’s desk.

b. Lesson development (activities, procedures)

The teacher will then display the Solar System PowerPoint on the View Board from their iPad.
The teacher will go to the first slide and read what all the powerpoint will entail.
The teacher will then go to the next slide to show the students one view of the planets in order. The
teacher will highlight each planet and point to them as they are said.
The teacher will then go to the next slide to show a different view of the planets and their orbits
around the sun. The teacher will again highlight each planet and point to them as they are said.
The teacher will then go on to the next eight slides and read all the facts about each planet and
highlight what each planet looks like.
The teacher will then go to the next slide and teach the mnemonic My Very Energetic Mother Just
Served Us Noodles.
The teacher will then go to the next slide and instruct the students to add up all the moons that orbit
the planets and find the total number of moons in our solar system. Once the students have found an
answer, the teacher will reveal the answer 138 on the next slide.
The teacher will then go on the next slides to discuss dwarf planets. Once the teacher reaches slide 20,
the teacher will ask the students, “who knows who this is a picture of?”. (Looking for the answer Pluto
from Disney.) The teacher will explain to the students that this is the planet Pluto and some believe this
is how Pluto from Disney got his name.
The teacher will then go to the next slide to show the students the orbits of the planets and dwarf
planets around the sun.
The teacher will then go on to the next slides to discuss asteroids, meteors, comets, meteoroids, and
meteorites.
Once the teacher reaches the last slide, the teacher will continue to display the last slide that
says, “My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Noodles”.

c. Evidence of differentiated instruction (content, process, product, or learning environment)

Process- The teacher will read all the planet names to Marcus during the pre and posttest of ordering
the planets.

d. Closure (summary)
To close the lesson, the teacher will then give each student another copy of the Order the
Planets worksheet to complete independently. (Looking for the same answers as above.)
Once all the students have finished, the teacher will go over with the students the answers by
displaying the worksheet on the View Board and annotating the answers on the board.
 VI. Assessment/evaluation
The students will be informally assessed based on their participation to earn two points toward their ten points
for the week.

VII. Modifications or accommodations

This lesson would primarily be taught at a fourth-grade level, but I have modified this lesson to be appropriate
for my students’ abilities.
The teacher will be reading the slides for students who struggle to read independently.

VIII. Self-evaluation
My students were not really into this lesson. I tried to make this lesson more fun and meaningful
because I know it can be a dry topic. However, the lesson ended up being hectic from a lot of laughter about
the planet Uranus. I addressed the “humor” behind the planet’s name and kept moving through the lesson as
planned. I found that I was getting side-tracked the more they were laughing which made the lesson difficult
to teach.
If I would teach this lesson again, I would try to get the “elephant out of the room” by addressing this
planet’s name ahead of the lesson and allowing them to get their laughs and giggles out prior to starting the
lesson. However, for what I did, I feel like I used good classroom management skills in shutting down the
laughter and trying to get the students back on track.

Cooperating Teacher Approval ________________________________________

Date ___________________