Solar System
Teacher Resources
Lesson Guide
Trying to decide how long this lesson might take? Check out this guide for lesson pacing, teacher instructions, and sample answers.
Big History Posters and Visual Aids
Looking to update the walls of your classroom and remind your students of important Big History concepts? Here’s a one-stop shop for visuals like the Big History timeline, origin story posters, threshold cards, sentence starters, claim-testing posters, and infographics.
Driving Question: How is the development of our Solar System an increase in complexity?
When gravity pulled together clouds full of different chemicals from dying stars, new space objects formed. Planetary systems like ours are more common than we once thought, but one special planet in our Solar System made it possible for amazing things to happen!
Learning Objectives:
- Describe the formation of our Solar System.
- Explain why planets are more complex than stars.
- Use scale switching to understand the scale of our Solar System.
Vocab Terms:
- accretion
- chemistry
- gravity
- nuclear fusion
- planet
- solar system
- supernova
Make this activity more interactive by cutting out the images and having students physically sort them—but don’t reveal the answer! Then, at the end of the lesson, they can go back and re-sort before they learn the answer. (This is great as a partner activity!)
Can you figure out how our Solar System formed? Check out the images and take a guess.
Connect Threshold 4 to current events by exploring the path that Artemus II took on its journey around the Moon and read more about humanity’s cosmic aspirations in this blog post.
The fourth Big History threshold made our corner of the Milky Way more complex. What were the ingredients and Goldilocks Conditions for this threshold?
Did you know that you can choose different Lexile levels of this article? Use the Version drop-down menu in the upper-left corner of the article and access the audio by clicking on the speaker icon in the upper-right corner. Find more reading supports on pages 3–5 of our Reading Guide.
It’s not all just empty space up there: our Solar System is made up of millions of cosmic objects. We’ll take a tour—but make sure to watch where you’re going!
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Guiding Questions
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Before you read
Preview the questions below, and then skim the article. Be sure to look at the section headings and any images.
While you read
Look for answers to these questions:
- What makes up our Solar System?
- Where does nuclear fusion occur in our Solar System?
- What types of planets make up our Solar System?
- How do planets form?
- What types of planets make up our Solar System?
- What makes Earth a unique planet in our Solar System?
- How do scientists think our Moon formed?
After you read
Respond to the following questions:
- How do we know so much about the formation of our Solar System?
- Do you think there are other planetary systems in our Universe that are like our own? Explain your reasoning.
While this video may be a little longer than others in Big History, it’s a must-watch! Students really begin to grasp the incredible scale of the Solar System. Looking for other ideas for demonstrating the scale of the Solar System? Check out this community conversation with a video of students creating a scale model on the school football field.
It can be difficult to visualize the scale of our Solar System. These filmmakers came up with a unique way to show this massive scale.
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Guiding Questions
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Before you watch
Preview the questions below, and then review the transcript.
While you watch
Look for answers to these questions:
- Why aren’t pictures of the Solar System to scale?
- How much space do you need to build a scale model of the Solar System if the Earth is the size of a marble?
- What planet orbits the edge of the Solar System?
- How do you know that the filmmakers made their model correctly, with the right proportions?
After you watch
Respond to this question: How does visualizing the scale of the Solar System help you understand the size of the Universe?
Key Ideas
When people read the news, a lot of the time they just skim through and look at the headlines. Let’s try summarizing your new knowledge about our Solar System for someone in a hurry.
Get students outside and moving (spinning!) in this accretion simulation. See how one Big History teacher’s class simulated accretion in this community post video.
It’s the nature of things to clump together and build mass. This next activity will give you a unique perspective on the process of accretion.
Do your students need some help to get the most out of historical comics? We’ve got a short lesson with a video, tool, and introductory activity. Check out our graphic biographies lesson plan to learn more about teaching using this genre.
Computers weren’t always mechanical. Meet Mary Golda Ross, a real-life human computer who helped build some of the first spacecrafts.
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Guiding Questions
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Before you read
Preview the questions below, and then skim the comic, paying attention to things like prominent colors, shapes, and types of text and fonts. How do you know where to start and in which direction to read? What’s in the gutters (the space between panels)? Who or what is the focus of the comic?
While you read
Look for answers to these questions:
- The comic describes Mary Golda Ross as a “computer.” What does this mean?
- What did Ross accomplish in her career?
- How has the artist designed the images in this comic to help you know in which order to read the text?
- Looking at just the images, what do you think is the theme of this comic?
After you read
Respond to this question: You may not have heard about the accomplishments of Mary Golda Ross. Why do you think some people often get left out of the big stories about our collective learning?
Despite being just 29 years old when she died, Wang Zhenyi, who published works about math, astronomy, and poetry, is remembered as one of China’s greatest scholars.
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Guiding Questions
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Before you read
Preview the questions below, and then skim the comic, paying attention to things like prominent colors, shapes, and types of text and fonts. How do you know where to start and in which direction to read? What’s in the gutters (the space between panels)? Who or what is the focus of the comic?
While you read
Look for answers to these questions:
- How was Wang Zhenyi educated?
- What ideas are conveyed in the first line of poetry at the top of the page?
- How did Wang Zhenyi contribute to the field of mathematics?
- What theory did Wang Zhenyi’s experiment overturn?
- How do the page’s design, text, and illustrations contribute to your understanding of Wang Zhenyi’s story?
After you read
Respond to this question: How does Wang Zhenyi’s story add to what you’ve learned about the formation of the Solar System in this lesson?
