The Earth and Seasons

A PowerPoint presentation for teaching key stage 3 on the motion of the earth and seasons. Teaching points include explaining where day and night come from, defining the 'year' and the 'day' in terms of the earth's motion, and explaining why seasons exist.

Lesson includes a true/false starter (revisited during plenary to assess progress), tasks requiring pupils to write their definitions of the day and the year, and explanation of the earth's tilted axis, and helpful animations to demonstrate both summer and winter. Also includes an optional 'exam-style' question at the end.

The true/false questions should be used at the start of the lesson, and then set aside for the rest of the lesson. When pupils complete the activity again at the end, they are encouraged not to change their previous answers, but to write their new answers beside them. Hands-up can be used to determine how many more questions they got correct at the end, and therefore indicate how much progress has been made.