Solar System Study

My district reading curriculum is StoryTown. The 3rd grade series ends with two stories, one fiction and one nonfiction, about our solar system. It is a wonderful way to end of the school year. The students really get into learning more about space and each of the planets. Our writing for these two weeks is a research project over each planet. Students are placed in groups of two or three and assigned a planet to study.

Because it is the end of the school year and I will be moving classrooms, my bulletin boards are down. So we created a new bulletin board with the planets lined at the top and the inside of our space ship at the bottom. We filled the space with stars and comets as well.

 

Each planet group researched and organized their information into a poster to present (Speaking & Listening!) as well as an individual travel brochure. The brochures were written in a persuasive manner to entise people to visit each planet. The students got pretty creative with this, two of my favorite: Do you need a tan? Mercury is the planet for you! and Are thunderstorms your thing? Visit Neptune!