Earth and Space Sciences Incursions

Earth and Space Sciences is the strand about the systems students live inside but rarely get to test: the weather, the water cycle, the ground under the school, and the movement of the Earth, Moon and Sun. The phenomena are far too big to bring into a classroom, which is why the strand is so often reduced to a diagram.

These sessions get around that with models students build and handle themselves. In the early years they measure hot and cold air and talk about how the weather changes what they do that day, test water samples for acid rain and pollution with a natural chemical indicator, and follow how water is used, transported and cleaned by people and by nature, and why fresh water is a limited resource.

In Year 3 and 4 the models turn astronomical. Students demonstrate how Earth's rotation on its axis causes day and night, orbit the Moon around the Earth by hand, and set out the relative positions of Earth, Moon and Sun that produce solar and lunar eclipses. A ping-pong ball circling a funnel stands in for orbital motion and the gravitational force holding the Moon in place. Our Changing Earth covers erosion and the reshaping of the surface itself.

By Year 5 and 6 students locate Earth within the solar system, follow how light travels through space, and explain how the atmosphere protects life here, then work through the geological processes behind earthquakes, volcanoes and other natural disasters. Each program page lists the Victorian Curriculum 2.0 content descriptions the session addresses.