Please note: The assignments below are alternative language activities that teachers may suggest some students could do as part of their classroom work. Only do any of these work pages when recommended by a teacher.
This video explains a solar eclipse. Watch it a few times.
This is a video of a solar eclipse in 2017 in the USA. It is interesting to see.
The next video explains a lunar eclipse.
This video explains the lunar eclipses especially for school children, so maybe a little easier to understand.
Below is a copy of your reading in Readworks. In your assignment called ‘The Moon and the Sun’ there is a passage called ‘Lunar Eclipses and Solar Eclipses’
Listen and read along in English with the audio feature above the passage in Readworks. Then read about the solar and lunar eclipses in Chinese below.
An eclipse happens when a planet or a moon gets in the way of the sun’s light. Here on Earth, we can experience two kinds of eclipses: solar eclipses and lunar eclipses.
当行星或月亮进入太阳光时,就会发生日食。在地球上,我们可以经历两种日食:日食和月食。
What’s the difference?
有什么区别?
Solar Eclipse 日食
A solar eclipse happens when the moon gets in the way of the sun’s light and casts its shadow on Earth. That means during the day, the moon moves over the sun and it gets dark. Isn’t it strange that it gets dark in the middle of the day?
This total eclipse happens about every year and a half somewhere on Earth. A partial eclipse, when the moon doesn’t completely cover the sun, happens at least twice a year somewhere on Earth.
In this picture, the moon is covering up the sun in the middle of the day. This total solar eclipse was visible from the northern tip of Australia on November 13, 2012.
在这张照片中,月亮在天中遮住了太阳。2012年11月13日,澳大利亚北端出现这次日全食。
But not everyone experiences every solar eclipse. Getting a chance to see a total solar eclipse is rare. The moon’s shadow on Earth isn’t very big, so only a small portion of places on Earth will see it. You have to be on the sunny side of the planet when it happens. You also have to be in the path of the moon’s shadow.
On average, the same spot on Earth only gets to see a solar eclipse for a few minutes about every 375 years!
平均而言,地球上的同一地点每375年只能看到几分钟的日食!
NASA
Lunar Eclipse 注意:此关系图不缩放。
During a lunar eclipse, Earth gets in the way of the sun’s light hitting the moon. That means that during the night, a full moon fades away as Earth’s shadow covers it up.
在月食期间,地球会妨碍太阳光照射月球。这意味着,在夜间,满月随着地球的阴影遮住它而消失。
The moon can also look reddish because Earth’s atmosphere absorbs the other colors while it bends some sunlight toward the moon. Sunlight bending through the atmosphere and absorbing other colors is also why sunsets are orange and red.
During a total lunar eclipse, the moon is shining from all the sunrises and sunsets occurring on Earth!
在月全食期间,月亮从地球上发生的所有日出和日落中闪耀!
NASA
Note: This diagram is not to scale. 阳光警告
NASA
The moon appears orange-red in a total lunar eclipse on October 27, 2004.
2004年10月27日,月全食中,月亮呈橙色红色。
Why don’t we have a lunar eclipse every month?
我们为什么不每个月都有月食呢?
You might be wondering why we don’t have a lunar eclipse every month as the moon orbits Earth. It’s true that the moon goes around Earth every month, but it doesn’t always get in Earth’s shadow. The moon’s path around Earth is tilted compared to Earth’s orbit around the sun. The moon can be behind Earth but still get hit by light from the sun.
In this diagram, you can see that the moon’s orbit around the Earth is at a tilt. This is why we don’t get a lunar eclipse every month. This diagram is not to scale: the moon is much farther away from Earth than shown here.
Because they don’t happen every month, a lunar eclipse is a special event. Unlike solar eclipses, lots of people get to see each lunar eclipse. If you live on the nighttime half of Earth when the eclipse happens, you’ll be able to see it.
It’s easy to get these two types of eclipses mixed up. An easy way to remember the difference is in the name. The name tells you what gets darker when the eclipse happens. In a solar eclipse, the sun gets darker. In a lunar eclipse, the moon gets darker.
Here is some information that you may find useful for developing more background knowledge about the Mayans and the Aztecs for this week’s class assignment.
Readworks assigned for this week will help you understand this topic. Go to the website Readworks.org and use your classroom code and password to find your reading work.
The reading passage is called ‘Phases of the Moon’. Don’t forget to switch on the audio for the passage and the questions.
Read the articles ‘The Earth’s Moon‘ and ‘The Movement of the Earth‘ assigned last week if you have not done so.
Watch the videos below to understand the science lesson for this week. Press play . You might want to watch them a few times.
This document gives more information about the moon and the phases. click here – What is the Moon Like
If we were in ‘real’ school I would still be reading a story to my kindergarten ELL students every lesson. We would continue to be learning about the features of a story such as the characters,the setting, the plot, the problem and the solution. Before reading, we would look at the title and picture walk through the book and make our predictions about what will happen. After reading we would check our predictions and then do an activity. Children would be practicing their listening and speaking skills while developing more vocabulary. In Term 3, I often read some fairy tales and fables.
The classroom teachers have prepared lots of wonderful learning opportunities for the kindergarten students. If there is time after doing their assigned work, your child may like to listen to a fairy tale or fable and do an activity that helps with the sequencing of events and the retelling of a story. I have attached a page with 6 pictures.
If your child likes to colour, they could colour in the pictures as a pre-reading activity. You could talk about:
How many characters can you see?
Where is this story taking place?
What do you think will happen?
Instead of a read aloud, the child can watch this video.
After watching the video, cut the page into the 6 sections. Ask your child to put them in order. Send me a picture if you can. I would love to see it.
Invite them to retell the story. If they are reluctant to respond you can prompt with questions and words. Here are some examples:
What happened first and point to picture #1, second, third, fourth, fifth, finally pointing to the pictures each time.
Alternatively, you could use prompts like first, then, next, after that, soon, later, (in any order) finally while pointing to each picture in turn.
Or use leading phrases followed by a question for each picture, e.g. When the mouse got caught, what happened? When the mouse bit the rope …what happened next?
They could just describe what happened in the beginning, the middle, the end of the video story?
You could ask ‘What is the problem in the story? What is the solution? This may still be difficult for many of the children to express in words. That’s okay.