Learning about Night and Day in Year 5 Science

In our Science topic, Earth and Space, we’ve been learning about how the Earth orbits the sun, why the moon appears in different shapes and more recently, why we experience night and day.

We began by reminding ourselves about how the Earth orbits the sun and how we define a year:

By clearing space in the classroom, we were able to create a demonstration of how night and day work. We all formed a circle and held hands facing outwards travelling anticlockwise in the circle to imitate the rotation of the Earth. The sun was demonstrated on the board and remained in a fixed position. Every time we could see the sun, it was daytime and whenever we could not see the sun, it was night time. The moment we could begin to see the sun, we said, “sunrise,” when we faced the sun directly, we said, “midday,” and as the sun left our peripheral vision we said, “sunset.”

Every time we stopped the rotation of the Earth, we could predict the time of day for each member of the circle. Those facing the sun directly would be at approximately 12pm and those facing directly away from the sun would be at midnight. Those halfway between midnight and sunrise would be at approximately 3-4am while those halfway between sunset and midnight would be at approximately 10-11pm.

Once we had estimated the times we were standing at, we had 10 minutes to practice making our own demonstration for an educational video in small groups of 4-5. Here are the children in rehearsals: