The Moon - KS3 Activate lesson

A full 1 hour lesson designed for a mixed ability year 7 class.
This is the 4th and final lesson in “Chapter 4 - Space” from Activate 1, Physics. This lesson is on ‘the Moon’.
This lesson should be suitable to teach to any KS3 Physics class, even by those where physics is not their specialism.
This lesson (and all lessons in this unit) is designed to be interactive and engaging, with plenty of real world examples and independent tasks.

From this lesson, students should be able to:

1. Describe the phases of the Moon
2. Explain what causes us to see phases of the Moon
3. Describe what happens during a solar eclipse and explain what causes a solar eclipse
4. Describe what happens during a lunar eclipse and explain what causes a lunar eclipse
5. Explain the difference between a lunar eclipse and a full moon, and explain why we don’t see a lunar eclipse every month

All of my lesson resources contain:

• A 5-in-5 retrieval-style starter
• An interesting lesson hook, careers link, or retrieval practice to start the lesson
• Teacher input slides with dual coding and reduced cognitive load
• Teacher models
• Regular ‘check for understanding’ slides, such as hand signals quizzes
• Regular student independent practice slides, with optional scaffolds, challenges and answer slides
• A plenary task